Around Broadway

One of the most interesting musicals to appear on Broadway this season brings a new look to an almost century-old story. Ninety-five years ago, Shuffle Along was an unprecedented sight on the Great White Way: a show written, produced, directed and performed by an African-American cast of characters. The not-quite-a-revival carries the unwieldy full title: Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed, which New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood calls "truth in advertising."  The current production, starring Audra McDonald and Brian Stokes Mitchell with choreography by Savion Glover and direction by George C. Wolf (who also wrote the book), has earned 10 Tony Award nominations. Isherwood explains why the show is deserving of those accolades.

The 2016 Tony nominees were announced on Tuesday, and Charles Isherwood, theater critic of The New York Times, joins WQXR morning host, Jeff Spurgeon, to gab about the big news. Most notably, the juggernaut known as Hamilton met lofty expectations with a record 16 nominations.  The musical about founding father Alexander Hamilton headlines a diverse list of potential winners, in contrast to the pool of Academy Award nominees that begat the #OscarsSoWhite social-media movement. In addition to trying to predict how many statuettes Hamilton creator Lin Manuel Miranda will take home, Isherwood mentions who was snubbed and which of the year's races are the most competitive. Listen to the discussion in the audio above.

Broadway is home to another a new musical based on a movie. Waitress springs from the 2007 film of the same name and tells the story of a small-town girl, who dreams of an escape from her small-town existence. It stars Jessie Mueller, who makes an even stronger impression than in her Tony Award-winning portrayal of the songwriter Carole King in Beautiful, the Carole King Musical. Pop artist Sara Bareilles wrote the songs for the show with care toward the characters and attention to language. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood joins WQXR morning host Jeff Spurgeon to offer more about what this Waitress is serving to theater audiences at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.

Tracy Letts, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright (August: Osage County) and Tony Award-winning actor (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf), has a new play running at his home company, Chicago-based Steppenwolf Theatre. The play, Mary Page Marlowe, tells the story of one woman at various points throughout her life. And to accomplish this, she is played by six talented actresses with a supporting cast of equal caliber. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood visited the Windy City to see the production and offers his impressions of the play, Anna D. Shapiro’s direction, reasons behind dividing the title role into a half dozen parts and whether it may land in New York in the near future.

Set at an urban public school on the brink of closure for the usual reasons — poor test scores and low graduation rates — playwright Ike Holter's Exit Strategy is an indictment of the state of public education but not a polemic. Much of the play takes place in a teacher's lounge, where faculty discuss their previous stints failing schools. When one enterprising student hacks into school's website, creating a Kickstarter campaign for last-ditch fund-raising, several teachers are inspired to act. Despite the serious subject matter, "the play is quite funny," says New York Times theater critic, Charles Isherwood. "The characters are wisecracking their way through this crisis in their careers."

This spring, England’s Royal Shakespeare Company has taken up residence at the Harvey Theater at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It's presenting four of Shakespeare’s plays — Richard II; Henry IV, Parts I and II; and Henry V — in a package called King and Country: Shakespeare’s Great Cycle of Kings. Our intrepid critic, Charles Isherwood of The New York Times, has traveled far from Broadway to take in approximately 12 hours of the Bard's prose and verse over three days. During that period, he experienced David Tennant as Richard II, Antony Scher as Falstaff and Alex Hassell as Prince Hal, who becomes King Henry V, and reports that the company is in good hands. Click on the audio above to hear more of his impressions. Performances of the productions continue through May 1.

With a book by comedian/actor/author Steve Martin, lyrics by singer/songwriter Edie Brickell and a bluegrass-inflected score by both, Bright Star comes to Broadway music with its creators as the most recognizable names on the marquee. Set in North Carolina, the story jumps back and forth between moments in the life of Alice Murphy; it shows her both as a young rebellious girl in the 1920s and later as a sophisticated woman who runs a literary journal in the 1940s. As Alice, Carmen Cusack impresses in her Broadway debut, playing the main character at both stages.  New York Times theater critic CharlesIsherwood describes the show as more gentle alternative to the usual Broadway spectacle. Hear more of his thoughts in the audio above. 

Dry Powder, a new play that just debuted at The Public Theater, is bringing the same discussions about the world of finance to the stage as the film The Big Short brought to the movies. The title refers to cash reserves or highly liquid assets, which are central to playwright Sarah Burgess's plot about an executive facing a PR nightmare after throwing himself a lavish party at the same time his firm is forcing layoffs. The play comes to The Public with a big endorsement as co-recipient of this year’s Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award, given to an unproduced full-length play by an emerging playwright. The award comes with a $25,000 prize for the playwright and $50,000 for the company first mounting it. It also boasts a star-studded cast, featuring Claire Danes, Hank Azaria and John Krasinski, in his stage debut. Meanwhile, its director, Thomas Kail, has another show running now in New York — perhaps you've heard of it: Hamilton. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood lets us know his investment in the production. 

With its suggestive exclamation point, the title of the new Broadway musical Disaster! hints at the campy, over-the-top qualities it brings to the Nederlander Theatre. Set on a cruise ship precariously moored along the Hudson River, the show spoofs disaster movies such as The Poseidon Adventure and Earthquake that were popular in the 1970s. It also features a number of disco hits and pop songs of the era. Written by Seth Rudetsky and Jack Plotnick, the production has assembled a cast of well-known Broadway names: Faith Prince, Roger Bart, Adam Pascal and Kerry Butler, among them. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood has experienced this Disaster! first-hand and weighs in on its less-than calamitous results.

Zimbabwean-American playwright Dania Gurira is having a moment. Her play Eclipsed has just transferred to Broadway in a production starting Oscar winner Lupita Nyong'o at the Golden Theatre, and her work, Familiar, is now running at Playwrights Horizons. New York Times theater crick Charles Isherwood joins us to talk about this notable feat.  "For dead white men it's not that unusual," to have two plays simultaneously on stage in New York City, he says, adding, "but for a black women it's quite remarkable. And in fact Eclipsed has made history in the sense that it's the first Broadway play that is directed by written by and entirely acted by black women." Eclipsed is the darker of the two works, exploring of the brutal treatment of women during the Liberian civil war. Familiar provides a little more levity, as it follows the drama set in motion when a Zimbabwean aunt visits her family in Minnesota.

As the Obama era is about to begin, four brilliant, accomplished people — Harvard types, all of them — consider racism in America in “Smart People” by playwright Lydia R. Diamond. While the hot-button issue is difficult for these intellectuals to articulate, it manifests concretely through the characters' relationships with each other. Kenny Leon directs the production by Second Stage Theatre, featuring a strong cast comprised of Mahershala Ali, Joshua Jackson, Anne Son and Tessa Thompson.  New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood checks it out to see if the play is as smart as the characters in it.

Actor Len Cariou has enjoyed a long and distinguished career. Among his many appearances, he created the role Sweeney Todd in the eponymous Stephen Sondheim musical. Perhaps less well-known is Cariou’s long résumé of Shakespearean roles. Early in his career, he performed in several of Shakespeare's plays at both the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada, and the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Now, in his new one-man show, Broadway and the Bard, Cariou presents Shakespeare's soliloquies alongside apt show tunes. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood shares his impressions.

While on the latest of her many supposed deathbeds, a "tart-tongued" mother, played by Tony-winner Linda Lavin, reveals to her children the details of a tryst from decades past that may resonate in the present in Richard Greenberg's "Our Mother's Brief Affair." The play, directed by Lynne Meadow, also features Kate Arrington, Greg Keller and John Procaccino. Lavin is "an occasion unto herself," says New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood, as he weighs in on the merits of this 11th collaboration between Greenberg and the Manhattan Theatre Club, which is currently running on Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

To mark last year's centennial of the birth of the writer and theologian Thomas Merton, the Actors Theater of Louisville has produced a play about him called "The Glory of the World." Merton spent much of his life in a Trappist monastery near Louisville. The play, written by Charles Mee and directed by Les Waters, has now blown its way into the Harvey Theater at BAM. The play is by no means a straightforward biographical drama and, in fact, it's unusual enough that we’ll just let New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood explain. "The Glory of the World" can be seen at the Harvey Theater through Feb. 6.

Michael Frayn's frantic 1982 sex farce-within-a-farce "Noises Off" returns to Broadway for a third run this season under the auspices of the Roundabout Theatre Company. This time around the director is Jeremy Herrin, who staged the two-part Tudor drama "Wolf Hall" last season. The starry cast features Andrea Martin and Megan Hilty, among others. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood tells us whether or not it’s worth running to see at the American Airlines Theatre, where it's running through March 6.

Jacobean era dramas are rarely seen on major New York stages, but the enterprising Red Bull Theater company, under the artistic directorship of Jesse Berger, has made a specialty of them. Its latest foray into the period — the time during the reign of James VI of Scotland from 1567–1625 — is a production of "The Changeling," a play from 1622 written by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Rowley. Jacobean dramas are generally noted for their sensational stories of lust and violence and revenge. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwook lets us know if "The Changeling" satisfies on these fronts and what it has to offer a contemporary audience. "The Changeling" can be seen at the Lucille Lortel Theatre through Jan. 24.

The beloved 1964 musical "Fiddler on the Roof," with its book by Joseph Stein and score by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, is back on Broadway this season. Based on writer Sholem Aleichem's Yiddish tales of Tevye the milkman, this new production of "Fiddler" is the show's fifth return to the Great White Way. The role of Tevye was originated by Zero Mostel, played on stage and film by Chaim Topol, and on Broadway by Herschel Bernardi, Theodore Bikel, Leonard Nimoy and Harvey Fierstein, among others. In this production, five-time Tony Award nominee Danny Burstein has the role, and the director is Bartlett Sher, acclaimed for his Rodgers and Hammerstein revivals on Broadway. But do we really need yet another "Fiddler on the Roof?" New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood explains why we just might. "Fiddler on the Roof" runs through July 3 at the Broadway Theatre.

Arthur Miller’s "A View from the Bridge" hasn’t exactly been a stranger to Broadway. It has already been revived three times, most recently in 2010 in a production starring Liev Schreiber. But it’s back once more this season in an innovative production from the Dutch director Ivo van Hove. The staging was originally seen at London’s Young Vic Theater and later in the West End. Ivo van Hove is known for his radically stylized productions of classic plays by authors ranging from Ibsen to Moliere to Lillian Hellman. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood lets us in on how the director approaches this particular American classic. "A View from the Bridge" runs through Feb. 21 at the Lyceum Theatre.

The new musical "These Paper Bullets!" at the Atlantic Theater Company bills itself as a "modish ripoff" of Shakespeare’s comedy "Much Ado About Nothing." The new adaptation is by Rolin Jones, who has updated the setting to London during the swinging sixties. The production, directed by Jackson Gay, also features new songs written by Billie Joe Armstrong, the front man for the band Green Day who wrote the Tony Award-winning musical "American Idiot." We are used to seeing Shakespeare plays set in any number of times and places, and we ask New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood if this production sounds like something more radical.

One of the world’s most successful musicians returns to his musical roots in his latest Broadway show. Andrew Lloyd Webber, best-known for "Phantom of the Opera," "Evita" and other shows that feature pop music in an operatic vein, has made a musical out of the movie "School of Rock." The 2003 film starred Jack Black as a slacker dude who gets a job as an elementary school teacher.  It’s a throwback for Lloyd Webber, whose first successes, "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" and "Jesus Christ Superstar," were musically cast in a more pop-rock idiom. The new show also features a book written by Julian Fellowes, creator of "Downton Abbey." New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood checked it out to see if Lloyd Webber still has his magic touch. "School of Rock" can be seen at the Winter Garden Theater.

A downtown theater playwright, a sensational Broadway actress and a most unusual family are all part of the show called "Hir" (pronounced "here"). Playwright Taylor Mac is probably best known — to those who follow downtown theater, at least — as an androgynous singer and actor who appears in his own shows. But with "Hir," in which he does not appear, he’s advancing his career in a new direction. The family-in-crisis story involves a returning war veteran, an angry spouse and more than a little gender-bending. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood looks at this twice-extended bold comedy, which has been extended yet a third time to run through Jan. 3 at Playwrights Horizons.

Actor George Takai is best known as Sulu from "Star Trek," as well as for his LGBT activism and funny posts on Facebook. He and Lea Salonga, the original Kim in “Miss Saigon,” are the headliners in the new Broadway musical "Allegiance," which tackles a tough historical subject. Like many thousands of Japanese-Americans, Takai was interned by the U.S. government in camps during World War II after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood offers his review of "Allegiance," which features a score by Jay Kuo and book by Kuo, Marc Acito and Lorenzo Thione, in a production directed by Stafford Arima. It runs through September 2016, at the Longacre Theatre.

A Broadway season just wouldn’t be complete without a jukebox musical it sometimes seems. This year’s model comes courtesy of the 1980s pop star Gloria Estefan. “On Your Feet!” charts the story of her rise, alongside her husband and collaborator Emilio Estefan. Sprinkled throughout this bio-musical are familiar hits like “Conga” and “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You.” New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood lets us know what he’s seen and heard in this new production directed by Jerry Mitchell at the Marquis Theatre.

In his 1995 play “Sylvia,” A.R. Gurney threw a couple of curve balls at the theme of a man dealing with a mid-life crisis. Instead of the man threatening his marriage by falling in love with a younger woman, he falls in love with (curve ball No. 1) a dog, who is (curve ball No. 2) played onstage by a woman. The play gets its first Broadway production at the Cort Theatre with a cast that stars Matthew Broderick, Julie White and Annaleigh Ashford.  New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood shares his impressions of the production and of where “Sylvia” stands in A.R. Gurney’s substantial body of work.

A show most famous for putting Bernadette Peters in the spotlight is getting a bigger spotlight of its own. The musical "Dames at Sea" started in a tiny café Off-Off-Broadway in 1966 and helped launch the career of a show business legend. Now the show itself is most definitely on Broadway at the Helen Hayes Theatre in a production choreographed and directed by Randy Skinner. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood takes a look at this new production of an old hit that pays tribute to an even older kind of entertainment — movie musicals of the 1930s.

The holiday season is approaching ... or looming, you might say, depending on how you feel about holidays and family get-togethers. A middle-class family Thanksgiving in lower Manhattan is the setting for Stephen Karam’s “The Humans,” another play in a long line that finds its springboard in domestic tensions tightened to the breaking point at ritual gatherings. But New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood says Karam’s work has several, mostly good, surprises in store in this "flawless" production. “The Humans,” directed by Joe Mantello in a Roundabout Theatre Company production, runs through Dec. 27 at the Laura Pels Theatre.

A new play on a tough topic is part of this season’s Underground season at Roundabout Theatre Company. The play is “Ugly Lies the Bone,” written by Lindsey Ferrentino. The topic is the struggle of U.S. military veterans to return to civilian life while healing from the wounds of their overseas experiences. The play has a perhaps surprising element: Jess, the veteran at the center of the play, is a woman. New York Times critic Charles Isherwood offers a review of this latest production from Roundabout Underground, now in its ninth season of nurturing and presenting new artists to New York audiences.

Razzle Dazzle is the jazzy title of a new book about the history of Broadway by Michael Riedel, the New York Post theater columnist and co-host of the show "Theater Talk." The book, which was published this past Monday by Simon and Schuster, concentrates on the near death of Broadway in the 1960s and its gradual recovery. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood joins us to talk about what Riedel suggests were the prime factors in the sagging fortunes of the commercial theater during the '60s. And he asks, how did it begin to recover?

The Tony-winning musical "Spring Awakening," a coming-of-age musical about teenagers and sex, has returned to Broadway. The original production of the musical by Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik closed only in 2009, and thus might seem to be making an unusually quick return. However, the new production on stage at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre takes a very novel approach. It’s from the Los Angeles-based company Deaf West Theatre and the cast features a mixture of hearing and deaf actors. Casting deaf actors in a musical may seem like a challenging prospect. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood explains the mechanics of the production and whether or not the show merits its quick return to Broadway.

Playwrights Horizons kicks off its fall season with "The Christians," a play by Lucas Hnath about a schism in an evangelical church. In the production, directed by Les Waters, Andrew Garman portrays a pastor who causes an uproar among his flock when he decides that church policy will no longer recognize the existence of a literal hell. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood offers his review.  “The Christians” can be seen through Oct. 11 at Playwrights Horizons.

The new Off Broadway show "The Legend of Georgia McBride" by Matthew Lopez is a comedy about a young Elvis impersonator named Casey who’s barely making a living performing in a Florida Panhandle bar. With an empty bank account and pregnant wife, during the course of the play Casey makes a rather surprising career switch from struggling Elvis impersonator to successful drag queen. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood lets us know if "The Legend of Georgia McBride" is something to get all shook up about. The MCC Theater production directed by Mike Donahue with choreography by Paul McGill runs through Oct. 11 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre.

Labor Day, the semi-official end to the summer, is now in the rearview mirror. Which means that theater-watchers will be eagerly getting ready for the fall season. Broadway already has seen one smash musical open, the hotter-than-hot ticket “Hamilton,” but there’s much more to come, both on Broadway and Off. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood takes a look at the new fall crop of shows and suggests some highlights.

A new Off Broadway play by Sherie Rene Scott and Dick Scanlan tells the semi-autobiographical account of their experiences working with prison inmates. The play's unusual title — "Whorl Inside a Loop" — refers to a particular fingerprint pattern. Scott also stars in the play as a well-regarded actress who agrees to teach six inmates how to tell their stories behind the bars of a men's maximum security prison. Sharing intimate and sometimes hilarious details of their former lives, this unlikely group forms a bond. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood offers his review.

The latest play from the prolific A.R. Gurney comes with a forthright title, "Love & Money." The Signature Theater Company production features Maureen Anderman as the wealthy, elderly Cornelia Cunningham, who has decided to give away her entire fortune to charity, at least until an unexpected visitor arrives. As the work of divesting herself of the money continues —with good intentions — complications arrive in the form of a young man who is — or at least, claims to be — the woman’s grandson. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood offers his thoughts on "Love & Money," directed by Mark Lamos. The Signature Theater Company production runs through Oct. 4 at the Pershing Square Signature Center.

Annie Baker won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for her play "The Flick," which has been restaged this summer at the Barrow Street Theatre. But Baker also has a new play concurrently on the boards called simply "John," and presented by the Signature Theatre Company. The drama tells the story of a young couple with relationship problems who the week after Thanksgiving pay a visit to a rather odd bed and breakfast in Gettysburg, Penn. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood lets us know if "John" is worth the trip to the theater. The production plays through Sept. 6 at the Pershing Square Signature Center.

The Public Theater’s second free Shakespeare in the Park presentation this summer is the late romance “Cymbeline,” a twisty tale of duplicity and betrayal directed by Daniel Sullivan. The cast features Shakespeare in the Park regulars Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater as young newlyweds separated by the titular king and his conniving queen. The convoluted "Cymbeline" plot involves, among other things, a headless corpse, a beautiful heroine who fools everyone into thinking she’s a boy simply by putting on a boy’s clothes and Jupiter flying in and out of the action on an eagle’s back. The play has been in and out of fashion over the years, with many detractors over the last century or so. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood has seen several productions, so he has a sense of perspective to offer as he evaluates Shakespeare in the Park’s "Cymbeline" at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.

The story behind one of the best-known hymns in the English language is the subject of the new Broadway musical "Amazing Grace." The show tells the story of the man who wrote, “I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.” John Newton worked in the English slave trade before changing his ways and becoming a spokesman for abolition in Great Britain — and a hymn writer. The production at the Nederlander Theatre features a score by Christopher Smith, a newcomer to musical theater, and a book by Smith and Arthur Giron.  New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood reviews it in this conversation.

The young playwright Joshua Harmon made a splash with his comedy “Bad Jews” in 2012, which was initially presented at the Roundabout Theatre Company’s black-box theater and was later produced at its larger Laura Pels Theatre. The play not only got great reviews, it also received productions at numerous regional theaters around the country. Now Roundabout is mounting another Harmon play, “Significant Other,” a romantic comedy about a gay man in his 20s watching his female friends pair up around him as he remains single and a little lonely. It stars Gideon Glick and is directed by Trip Cullman. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood explains why Harmon’s new work is good summer entertainment.

Even when everybody knows what’s planned, you can never be sure of what will actually happen when friends get together. In Bruce Norris's new play “The Qualms,” what’s supposed to be a quiet evening of dinner, drinks and what used to be called “swinging” doesn’t go as expected. It’s a barbecue with a side of sexual dallying among four couples. Norris’s comedy, directed by Pam MacKinnon, is running at Playwrights Horizons through July 12. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood lets us in on the story and the performances.

The 2015 Tony Awards ceremony was Sunday night at Radio City Music Hall. The new musical "Fun Home" had the most fun, winning awards for Best Musical, Book, Score, Leading Actor and Director. "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime" was named Best New Play. As the statuettes were being handed out, New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood was keeping track — not only of the winners, but also of the nominees who he thought should have won. Isherwood shares his list, as well as a few thoughts on the telecast itself.

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 production. Is it a ballet on Broadway, a Broadway musical, or something in between? Wheeldon is a former principal dancer with New York City Ballet and most of the dancers come from the ballet world, too, including the leads, Robert Fairchild and Leanne Cope, who get to do something rarely required of ballet artists — they sing. The playwright Craig Lucas has adapted the original screenplay by Lerner.   New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood visits this week to say if the stage version swings — and sings.

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.