Robert Hofler — Theater Critic

When a playwright tells a truly great story, it’s often difficult to review what’s happening on stage. The pleasure comes from watching that story unfold in the theater, not reading about it in a review. That proverbial onion needs to be unpeeled layer by layer in front of a rapt audience that will be both shocked and moved to tears by what’s unexpectedly discovered at the play’s core.

There’s often a big problem with little plays, those that clock in at 90 minutes or less. While audiences like getting home early, it could be asked of them, “Why didn’t you just stay home?” Adam Bock’s new play, “The Receptionist,” opened Thursday at the Pershing Square Signature Center, where it is presented by Second Stage. It runs 80 minutes and takes about 40 to get to the shocker.

A man wearing a white stocking cap is not the most eccentric aspect of the “Hamlet” revival that opened Monday at BAM’s Harvey Theatre after a run at London’s National Theatre. The headwear, however, does give us a clue to what Shakespeare’s famous Dane would have been if Truman Capote had ever played the role. The only difference, Truman’s cap would have been cashmere. Abeysekera’s looks to be pure Polyester.

As for Holden’s performance, it’s amazing he doesn’t collapse from exhaustion before “Kenrex” ends. I felt the same about Andrew Scott in “Vanya” and Sarah Snook in “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” and if you found those one-person plays to be great theatrical experiences, “Kenrex” is the show for you. I found all three to be endurance contests for the actors, as well as a little gimmicky in the actors’ transitions from one character to the next.

“The Lost Boys” doesn’t know what it wants to be: a shocker, a tear-jerker or a parody. We’re supposed to find the vampire gang frightening, but at one point Arden sends Ronald Reagan, dressed up as Dracula, across the stage.

This “Joe Turner” production is one of the season’s best. Loomis’ entrance and other memorable moments owe much to David Gallo’s set, Paul Tazewell’s costume, Stacey Derosier’s lighting and Steve Bargonetti’s original music.

Stoller’s songs are serviceable, Rainer Dart’s lyrics are something less. There’s nothing as catchy as Stoller’s “Yakety Yak” or “Jailhouse Rock.” To make up for that deficit, the show closes with “Wind Beneath My Wings,” even though Stoller didn’t write it. That credit belongs to Jeff Silbar and Larry Henley, who have been relegated to a “special thanks” on the last page of the Playbill credits. A mess as major as “Beaches” required not one but two directors, Lonny Price and Matt Cowart.

Kenny Leon’s direction levels some of the imbalance in the play’s humor. He gives the supporting characters just enough edge to inflict pain without ever spilling so much blood that someone turns into a villain. He also sets up a marvelous two-person fight between Richard Thomas, the HOA’s long-time president, and Anika Noni Rose, the new member who hosts the meetings. Thomas and Rose deliver two completely different performances that make beautiful dissonance. From the beginning, Thomas exudes bonhomie to the HOA and the entire world beyond, while Rose remains reserved, almost faceless. But just you wait. She’s a tiger waiting her turn to pounce.

“Schmigadoon!” on stage is no “Death Becomes Her.” It is a photo-copy replica of the TV show’s first season, in which two doctors from New York go on a camping trip in the Catskills, only to end up in a musical comprised of songs and plot points from famous shows of the 1940s and ’50s, most specifically “Carousel,” “The Music Man” and, of course, “Brigadoon.” The running joke is that while Dr. Melissa Gimble likes musicals, Dr. Josh Skinner can’t stand them and has to roll his eyes and make snide comments whenever anyone dances or breaks into song, which is often.

Edebiri won an Emmy playing a depressive character on “The Bear,” but there, it’s a supporting character and it’s television. On stage, in her Broadway debut, Edebiri leaves it to the other actors to carry the drama. That’s not a great choice, but it makes for an effective first act, because the other actors are so good. In the second act, Catherine becomes fully alive. She takes control of her life, and in facing that character’s struggles head-on, Edebiri has to deliver a more vivid performance. Instead, she retreats to mannerisms, delivering facial tics and verbal hesitations. There’s a big hole in the middle of this “Proof.”

Brody also resists the grand gesture, even though Yarris is a very flashy character, especially in the way he tells a story. It has been said of movie actors that a great face is more important than great talent. Paul Newman comes to mind. Of course, Marlon Brando possessed that rare combo of having both. I always thought stage actors were different. Talent is everything. Brody may be an exception. He’s definitely a gifted actor, and in “The Fear of 13,” he puts a damper on his tendency to push it, as he sometimes does onscreen. On stage, he’s a real theater animal and his performance is immeasurably enhanced by a face and body that rivet an audience’s attention for two straight hours.

Jim Parsons joins this distinctly downtown cast, and his drag take on Rose’s money-grubbing mother sets back transvestites to a pre-Dame Edna era. Parsons makes no attempt to appear female, scoring major comic points with his baritone and often butch delivery. He’s so awesomely ugly, complete with two white doves above his receding hairline, that his character screams for a big solo entrance. It’s a major missed comic opportunity that Parsons enters the stage as simply part of the ensemble.

With a less gifted cast, “The Adding Machine” could be a real trial to sit through. The first act is a series of monologues, some of which are delivered directly to the audience. As Mrs. Zero, Jennifer Tilly gets the first long speech as she sits in bed next to a catatonic husband who has bored her into distraction, and overeating, for years. This scene and the one on Death Row where Mrs. Zero brings her husband his favorite dish of ham and eggs are comic gems. Tilly has arrived at that wonderful Shelley Winters stage of her career, and she should be getting some of those roles that Jennifer Coolidge continues to gobble up.

The reference to that famous 1950s family sitcom applies here because, boy, are the performances big, broad and occasionally very funny. Led by Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf, the ensemble in this Joe Mantello-directed production acts up a storm of category 6 proportions. There’s more acting going on at the Winter Garden than the rest of Broadway combined, and that includes “Oh, Mary!”

On stage, “Dog Day” also can’t duplicate the crowd scenes outside the bank that distinguish the movie version, where Sonny becomes an instant folk hero to the bystanders. In a masterstroke of writing and direction, Guirgus and Goold turn the theater audience into those very willing enablers.

Spending an afternoon with this Capote is something you wouldn’t wish on his worst enemies — Jacqueline Susann and David Reuben, included. When Capote shakes his bottle of Tuinals, he gives us false hope that he’ll swallow its contents right there and then.

Only the gardener appears to have ever met Dahl before “Giant” begins. Bette Davis in “Dinner” delivers her only faceless performance. She knew that to create a character who could deal with a nutcase-boss she needed to ignore the tantrums, brush off the arrogance, be almost invisible. Davis should have given acting lessons to Levey and Stirling who react in outrage and horror to every mal mot delivered by Lithgow.

Now that “Every Brilliant Thing” has played Broadway, the show’s next stop should be a Celebrity Cruise. At 75 minutes, it’s the perfect length to fill up that awkward gap between the evening buffet and the floating slot machines.

Reddick’s story delivers so much dizzying suspense (after you’ve figured out what’s going on) that even a huge bomb explosion – Masha Tsimring’s lighting and Kathy Ruvuna’s sound effects make you jump — is something of a letdown.

There are a lot of speeches in Ziegler’s play, many of them laced with a subversive contemporary wit and a bracing grip on what it means to give birth or not. Her “Antigone” doesn’t have the ghoulish fascination of the original; however, as depicted here, birth and abortion can be far more scary. The play ends with Keenan-Bolger and Perkins in a tight embrace, one that excludes men — even a good-guy like Smith’s Haemon. Men are mere bystanders here.

It doesn’t happen often, but every once in a while a play is not so much a play as it is an audition for a Netflix or HBO series. The TV company could be NBC or CBS if not for the fact that “The Reservoir,” which opened Tuesday at the Atlantic Theater Company, is about alcoholism and Alzheimer’s.

“The Other Place” is a far looser adaptation and update. Beyond the too cute name changes — Annie/Antigone, Chris/Creon, Erica/Eurydice and the soothsayer Terry/Tiresias (Jerry Killick) — “The Other Place” plays like an improv exercise in which actors, who are only vaguely familiar with the Sophocles classic, are put on a stage with an urn full of ashes and directed, “To now gives us ‘Antigone.’”

Even though “High Spirits” is a nearly forgotten antique, Encores! has cast it with flair, bringing real Broadway stars to the stage. In addition to Lenk (“The Band’s Visit”) and Martin (tons of stuff), there’s Steven Pasquale (“The Bridges of Madison County”) and Phillipa Soo (“Hamilton”) in the roles of the husband and wife whose stiff-upper-lip marriage disintegrates under Elvira’s laser-focused high-jinks. Playing the very British couple, Pasquale and Soo are cast against type and can be thankful that “High Spirits” is a limited engagement.

At its core, “Marjorie Prime” tells a simple kitchen-sink story of two adults trying to care for an aging relative. Harrison tries to up the ante by dipping into his gothic drawer of horrors to deliver not one but two suicides that push the human narrative into the contrived. In the end, the machines are more honest than the humans and, better yet, there’s none of the angst.

In the first scene, Young delivers the best performance by an adult actor of a child character since Anika Noni Rose played a kid in the original 2003 production of “Caroline, or Change.” Braun isn’t quite as convincing – who would be? – but he’s admirably effective playing a little boy despite this actor being over six feet tall.