BROADWAY & ME QUICKIES

The Play: Left on Tenth; an adaptation of Delia Ephron’s memoir about falling in love again after the death of her husband and then having to fight the medical crisis that threatened to cut short that new happiness  Written by: Delia Ephron        Directed by: Susan Stroman One good thing: Julianna Margulies and Peter Gallagher are the show’s marquee-name leads but its true MVPs are Peter Francis James and Kate MacCluggage who play more than a half dozen roles each and find ways to make every one of them distinctive One not-so-great thing: Neither Ephron nor Stroman has figured out how to transfer the story from the page to the stage and they lean so much on direct-address narration that the result is too much tell and far too little actual show.     

The Play: We Live in Cairo, six young people—one of them played by Ali Louis Borzgui, who broke out in last season’s too-short-lived revival of “The Who’s Tommy”—live, love and put themselves on the line for democracy in this musical set in Egypt during the Arab Spring of 2011 and its aftermath Written by: The Lazours        Directed by: Taibi Magar One good thing: It’s great to get a story about a major historical event like the Arab Spring told by Arab writers, an Arab director and an entirely Arab cast One good thing:   David Bengali’s dynamic video projections are immersive, informative and occasionally gorgeous One not-so-great thing: The brothers Daniel and Patrick Lazour who collaborated on the book, music and lyrics pack in so much of what happened during that tumultuous period that they don’t leave room for much character development     

The Play: Romeo + Juliet; this 21st century spin on the classic love story, which features inclusive and gender-bending casting, music by the hip producer and frequent Taylor Swift collaborator Jack Antonoff and Gen-Z idols Kit Connor and Rachel Ziegler in the title roles, is designed to appeal to young theatergoers and other young people the producers obviously hope to attract  Written by: William Shakespeare        Directed by: Sam Gold One good thing: Connor is everything you’d want in a Romeo: swoon-worthy, suitably sensitive and able to speak the Bard’s language beautifully One not-so-great thing: All the double and triple casting— one example: Juliet’s Nurse and the hothead Tybalt are played by the same actor — makes it hard to follow who’s doing what to whom, especially since costume changes are so rare and so random     

The Play: Franklinland; the sometimes fraught relationship between fathers and sons is filtered through a somewhat comic treatment of the fractious one between Founding Father Benjamin Franklin and his son William who sided with the British  Written by: Lloyd Suh        Directed by: Chika Ike One good thing: Designer Riw Rakkulchon’s picturesque set is richly detailed, especially given what must have been a limited budget One not-so-great thing:  Franklin is portrayed as such a preening buffoon that it throws the whole story off-balance    

The Play:   Vladimir; this morality tale about the courage needed to oppose fascism is inspired by the real-life journalist Anna Politkovskaya's struggles to tell the truth in Vladimir Putin’s Russia  Written by: Erika Sheffer        Directed by: Daniel Sullivan One good thing: It’s hard to think of a timelier subject and the cast lead by Francesca Faridany as the Politkovskaya stand-in give fully committed performances One not-so-great thing:  Too much of the set is devoted to recreating a TV station when so little of the play involves TV, but the entire production too often loses its focus as it wanders into unnecessary and confusing subplots        

The Play:  Distant Thunder; a young mixed-race attorney whose white mother raised him away from his tribal reservation—and his father who remained there—returns with a plan that he believes will help its residents but finds that he must first  reckon with his Native identity  Book by: Lynne Taylor-Corbett and Shaun Taylor-Corbett      Music and Lyrics by: Shaun Taylor-Corbett and Chris Wiseman Directed by: Lynne Taylor-Corbett One good thing: The obvious delight of the actors—nearly all of them Native American—at being part of a musical that tells a story about their contemporary culture is infectious One not-so-great thing: The book crams in too many of the familiar tropes about Native American life—the love of Frybread, the greed of companies trying to steal Native land, the sad legacy of the forced removal that lead to the Trail of Tears, the lingering despair over the failure of the Wounded Knee Occupation—and the score only soars when a couple of songs evoke Native rhythms, other

The Play:  The Counter; two lonely people in a small town  begin to share life-changing secrets as they  bond during his early-morning visits to the diner where she works  Written by: Meghan Kennedy        Directed by: David Cromer One good thing: Cromer is a master at bringing these kinds of intimate dramas to life, especially when he’s got actors as intuitive as Anthony Edwards and Susannah Flood and, in a smaller but still meaningful role, Amy Warren One more good thing: The finely observed details in Walter Spangler's scruffy and almost claustrophobic set subtly underscore the lives of the characters One not-so-great thing: The script leans a little too heavily on some improbable developments

The Play: Our Town; Broadway’s fifth revival of this 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning play about the cycle of life and death in a small New England Town is reimagined to create a more inclusive community in which local doctor Gibbs and his family are Black, newspaper editor Webb and his family are white and the locals include Jews, Muslims and a deaf milkman with whom many of them communicate in sign language    Written by: Thornton Wilder        Directed by: Kenny Leon One good thing: The TV actor Jim Parsons may have been cast because of his celebrity but he strikes all the right notes of sincerity and wryness in the pivotal role of the Stage Manager who serves as the play’s narrator One not-so-great thing:  It may be unfair but the specter of the David Cromer’s near perfect 2009 production, which quietly underscored the play's big themes and brought out the subtexts in all the characters, haunts this less nimble revival as evidenced by a gesture of homage in the final scene      

  The Play:  Good Bones; an affluent Black couple grapple with issues of class and race as they renovate a house in a gentrifying neighborhood where the wife grew up when both she and the community were poor and struggling Written by: James Ijames          Directed by: Saheem Ali One good thing: It’s great to see a group of complex characters—the local contractor who opposes the changes in the neighborhood is also profiting from them as people hire him to fix up the old homes they've recently bought—dig into the complicated issue of what revitalizing a neighborhood really means One not-so-great thing: A supernatural element seems superfluous, especially since it’s never made clear who the “ghosts” are or what their message is     

The Play: Dirty Laundry; a woman, a father and his mistress struggle through the stages of grief after the death of the mother and wife as a Greek chorus narrates and comments on the emotions they’re going through Written by: Mathilde Dratwa        Directed by: Rebecca Martinez One good thing:  The three actors in the main roles —Lakisha May as the daughter, Richard Masur as the dad and especially Constance Shulman as the other woman— are excellent at conveying both the text and subtext of the anger, confusion and regret their characters are experiencing One not-so-great thing: But the trio of actresses playing the Greek chorus aren’t as clearly written, directed or performed as they need to be to justify their presence   

  The Play: Yellow Face; a satirical blend of fact and fiction that explores racial representation, cultural appropriation and the role of Asian Americans in this country through the playwright’s own professional and very personal experiences  Written by: David Henry Hwang        Directed by: Leigh Silverman One good thing:  The chisel-cheeked TV star Daniel Dae Kim acquits himself well as the onstage surrogate for Hwang but stage vet Francis Jue is alternately hilarious and heartbreaking as the stand-in for Hwang’s father, a Chinese immigrant who took an outsized pride in being an American until his loyalty to the country was publicly challenged One not-so-great thing: It’s distressing that the questions this show raises remain so relevant almost two decades after a slightly different version ran at the Public Theater    

The Play: McNeal; a Nobel Prize-winning author wrestles with his mortality, his moral failings as a husband and father and the lure of using artificial intelligence when his own creative powers begin to fail him.   Written by: Ayad Akhtar        Directed by: Bartlett Sher One good thing: It’s fun to get an up-close look at the Oscar-winning actor Robert Downey Jr., acquitting himself nicely in his Broadway debut One not-so-great thing:  The play is so determined to cram in all the major issues of the day—art, technology, racial diversity, divisive politics, plagiarism,  parenting,  sex, death, Harvey Weinstein—that it all collapses into a mind-numbing muddle and the waste of a talented cast that includes the Tony-winning actresses Andrea Martin and Ruthie Ann Miles