Around Broadway

An awkward sweetness and a laconic wit are qualities the actor Jim Parsons wields with Emmy Award-winning skill in his role as Sheldon Cooper on the television series “The Big Bang Theory.” Those are not, however, characteristics we usually associate with the Creator of the Universe. And yet, there on the Broadway stage is Parsons in the title role of “An Act of God,” a new show written by David Javerbaum and directed by Joe Mantello. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood lets us in on the idea behind this act and even a couple of new commandments being issued to audiences at Studio 54.

A quiet play about a group of people working in a run-down Massachusetts movie theater is getting its second New York City production. Annie Baker’s “The Flick” might be quiet onstage, but it has made noise in the theater world, winning the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was first produced at Playwrights Horizons in 2013. Now the play has been remounted in a Off Broadway production at the Barrow Street Theatre, with the original cast intact and the same director, Sam Gold, at the helm.  How has the mix of old and new elements altered New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood’s impression? He tells us.

A show that can take on both Shakespeare and a group of Tony nominees sounds like a wonder and “Something Rotten” appears to be just that. The new musical has racked up an impressive 10 Tony Award nominations recently, including one for best musical. Set in the theater world of Elizabethan England and directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw, it’s the story of two brothers, Nick and Nigel Bottom, whose company is in desperate need of a hit to counter the overwhelming success of their chief rival, William Shakespeare. They concoct a crazy plan to sing and dance at the same time on stage — in other words, they’ve dreamed up the idea of the Broadway musical. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood lets us know if the show deserves the accolades it’s already received.

Broadway has been going to the movies for so long now that it’s almost surprising that the beloved 1951 movie-musical “An American in Paris” has only now been turned into a stage show. The man who finally undertook the challenge of brining the Gene Kelly-Leslie Caron romance to the stage is the internationally acclaimed ballet choreographer Christopher Wheeldon. He created the dances and directs the new production, which this week earned 12 Tony Award nominations, including best new musical. The film "An American in Paris" celebrated the City of Light, but even more so the music of George Gershwin. His songs were integrated into Alan Jay Lerner’s story about an American ex-patriate, played by Kelly, and his romance with a Parisian woman, played by Caron. The climactic dance scene was scored to the Gershwin concert work for which the picture was named. The film won seven Oscars, including an honorary one for Kelly. Now, given Wheeldon’s presence, one might assume that this stage version is a dance-driven produ

The 1958 movie musical “Gigi,” about a young woman being groomed for a life as a courtesan, won an impressive nine Oscars, including Best Picture. But a 1973 theatrical production did not enjoy similar success. Now a new lavish stage version has opened on Broadway. Directed by Eric Schaeffer, it stars Vanessa Hudgens, best known for the “High School Musical” franchise. This production features a newly adapted book by Heidi Thomas, which has been revised since its first, brief, appearance on Broadway. Along with it come all the Lerner & Lowe songs made famous in the movie, including “The Night They Invented Champagne,” “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” and “I Remember It Well.” New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood assesses the latest “Gigi," playing at the Neil Simon Theatre.

Social scientists tell us that relocating and setting up a new home is one of life’s big stresses. So the pressure is really on when a young, upwardly mobile black man moves back to his old Brooklyn neighborhood, bringing his white girlfriend with him. Add a little more tension when the man’s former schoolmate, fresh out of rehab, arrives to crash on the couch for a while. It can push a relationship to the breaking point. Love, fear and privilege are topics explored in playwright Tracey Scott Wilson’s new Off Broadway play “Buzzer,” directed by Anne Kauffman and now running at the Public Theater. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood shares his review.

Robert Askins’s dark comedy Hand to God has already had two productions Off Broadway, at Ensemble Studio Theatre and MCC Theater. Now it’s making the leap to the big time, opening on Broadway’s Booth Theatre in the thick of the spring season. The show stars Steven Boyer as a troubled, but good-hearted teenage boy whose alter ego, an evil hand puppet named Tyrone, gradually wreaks havoc on his life. It’s pretty unusual for a play to have three separate New York runs. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood lets us in on what makes Hand to God so special — and so funny.

The spring theater season is traditionally dominated by Broadway openings, as the deadline for Tony awards considerations arrives at the end of April. But Off Broadway doesn’t go into hibernation. Ars Nova, a small theater dedicated to new writing, has a hit on its hands with its latest show, Small Mouth Sounds, written by Bess Wohl and directed by Rachel Chavkin. The play is set at a weeklong silent spiritual retreat — which would seem to pose a dialogue challenge. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood answer the question: Do the characters break their vow of silence or is this an unusually quiet play?

The late Wendy Wasserstein hit the playwright’s jackpot in 1989, when The Heidi Chronicles took home the Tony Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the Drama Desk and New York Critic’s Circle Awards for best new play. Wasserstein’s tale of a New York City woman looking for love, but ultimately making her life — and even having a child — without a male partner, resonated with many women struggling over their life and career choices at the time. But that was more than a quarter-century ago. Now the play is being given its first Broadway revival in a new production starring Elisabeth Moss of “Mad Men” fame. The new production at the at the Music Box Theatre is directed by Pam MacKinnon and also features Bryce Pinkham and Jason Biggs as the men in and out of the heroine’s life. So, is the story relevant to a new generation and are the jokes still funny? New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood answers those questions and explains how Moss puts a new spin on the title role.

Larry David was one of the masterminds behind the megahit sitcom “Seinfield,” but since then he’s become better known for playing a version of himself in the HBO series “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Now he’s on Broadway in Fish in the Dark, which he wrote and stars in, alongside a cast that includes Rita Wilson, Ben Schenkman and Rosie Perez. You might be wondering if the Larry David you know from “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is the guy you’re going to see on Broadway. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood answers that question, and a few others.  Directed by Anna D. Shapiro, Fish in the Dark continues through June 7 at the Cort Theatre.

Helen Mirren won an Oscar for portraying Queen Elizabeth II in the 2006 movie “The Queen.” Now she picks up the famous handbag again in the play The Audience, written by Peter Morgan, who also wrote “The Queen,” and directed by Stephen Daldry. The play, originally seen in London's West End, depicts the Queen in her weekly meetings with various prime ministers, including Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Harold Wilson and David Cameron. The Audience is on Broadway at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre through June 28.

If you’ve been in a dive bar in New York, or anywhere else, just those simple words are enough to conjure the bleak decor, the smell of stale drink and something more. Eugene O’Neill’s 1939 play, The Iceman Cometh, takes place in a dive bar filled with broken people, and their broken dreams, who are the unseen props that fill the stage. The play makes only rare appearances on stage, this is in-part because of its extensive length. The four acts stretch across more than four hours. But the Brooklyn Academy of Music is currently hosting a production from Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. The play stars Nathan Lane and Brian Dennehy. Dennehy is an old hand at playing O’Neill characters, but Lane, one of New York’s great comic actors, might be a surprising casting choice. New York Times theater critc Charles Isherwood has visited this bleak O’Neill world and he shares his view of the production and also suggests why spending time in O’Neill’s world is worthwhile. The Iceman Cometh is at BAM's Harvey Theater through Marc

A new production from The Civilians, a journalistic theater company, is called Pretty Filthy and is an exploration of the pornography industry centered in Southern California’s San Fernando Valley. The Civilians use words of ordinary people — in this case, people who work in porn — so the story is told with less concern for poetry than for verity. And, oh yes, it’s a musical, too. The show, directed by Steve Cosson, features songs by the Civilians’ in-house composer Michael Friedman, and a book by Bess Wohl. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood lets us know if Pretty Filthy is worth seeing in, shall we say, the flesh.

Decades before Anton Chekhov’s plays about the struggles of existence among ostensibly successful and wealthy Russians, Ivan Turgenev wrote A Month in the Country, a play that contains many elements of Chekhov’s more famous works. There’s a bored, young wife on a country estate and men who orbit her in varying degrees of attraction and repulsion. The play has been given a rare revival this season by the Classic Stage Company. The production features two stars currently appearing in popular television shows: Taylor Schilling from “Orange Is the New Black” and Peter Dinklage from “Game of Thrones.” New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood shares his thoughts on this classic 19th century play as produced with actors of 21st century fame.

"Boy meets girl” is a fine start for so many stories, including Let the Right One In, a play adapted by Jack Thorne and based on the Swedish novel and film of the same name by John Ajvide Lindqvist. But when the boy is an adolescent misfit and the girl is a vampire, the consequences of their encounter are likely to be farther-reaching than those in a human-to-human hookup. No less than three other Broadway musicals have been vampire-based, although all three of them proved to be somewhat less than immortal. This one is directed by John Tiffany, known for the musical Once. How does this "boy meets girl" relationship begin, how does this vampire make her way in the world of mortals? And — more important for us theatergoers — is this vampire tale going to leave us bewitched or simply benumbed? New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood clues us in. The National Theatre of Scotland production of Let the Right One In runs through Feb. 15 at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn.

What can happen when two people meet? The possibilities are endless, but every relationship winds up following a single path, better known as “what actually happened.” But what about all of those alternative possibilities, the relationship roads not taken, the places the relationship might have gone? We see some of those alternative realities in Nick Payne’s 2012 play, Constellations, now in its Broadway debut at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Relativity, quantum mechanics and string theory are involved in this story — both in the play’s underpinnings and in the words spoken onstage by actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Wilson. So there are stars of several kinds in Constellations; New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood tells us if they shine brightly enough for Broadway.

Courtney Love, a famous rock widow and an actor and rock star in her own right, is making a low-key return to performing in the new musical theater piece Kansas City Choir Boy at HERE Arts Center, as part of the Prototype Festival of new opera and musical theater works. The music and lyrics performed in the show are written by Todd Almond, who plays the other leading role in a story that looks back on a relationship, which is permanently ended. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood gives his review. Hear a song from the musical:

Every Brilliant Thing is a one-man show that features a large supporting cast. The show's other big self-contradictory element is its exploration of the impenetrable sadness of depression through things that uplift us, specifically, a list of things that make life worth living. This mildly immersive show is written by Duncan Macmillan, directed by George Perrin and features a sole performer, Jonny Donahoe. But Donahoe conscripts numerous members of the audience to play minor or sometimes major roles in the play. Every Brilliant Thing was a hit at the Edinburgh Festival and now North American audiences are getting their first chance to see it in an Off-Broadway production at the Barrow Street Theater. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood looks for the brilliance in Every Brilliant Thing and shares what he finds.

The New York Times recently sent theater critic Charles Isherwood on a trip to London, where he saw Shakespeare, quasi-Shakespeare and Kristin Scott Thomas onstage. While there, Isherwood took note of the theatrical import-export balance between Broadway and the West End. • Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins at the Menier Chocolate Factory. • Shakespeare's Henry IV at the Donmar Warehouse. • Mike Bartlett’s King Charles III at the Wyndham's Theatre. • David Hare's Behind the Beautiful Forevers at the National Theatre. • Sophocles's Electra at the Old Vic Theatre.

Theatrical magic acts have a long, long tradition in the world of entertainment. With a name that pays homage to earlier forms of stage trickery, The Illusionists: Witness the Impossible is a slickly packaged production of seven professional prestidigitators, all of whom appear – and perhaps occasionally disappear – on the stage of the Marriott Marquis Theater. Without giving away any secrets of this family oriented presentation, New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood lets us know if you should or should not make an appearance at the box office for The Illusionists.