BROADWAY & ME QUICKIES

The Play: Mamma Mia!; a Broadway stop for the national tour of the crowd-pleasing musical about a girl who invites three of her single mom’s former lovers to the Greek island where she grew up because she wants to find out which of them is actually her father so that he can give her away at her upcoming wedding Music and Lyrics by: Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus     Book by: Catherine Johnson      Directed by: Phyllida Lloyd One good thing: The head-bopping music by the ABBA duo is pretty much irresistible and the crackerjack cast, clearly delighted to be on Broadway, infuses each of the 22 numbers with unabashed joy One not-so-great thing: The book is silly and now anachronistic (a DNA test would easily solve the parentage question) but some uplifting silliness is welcomed in these too-often depressing times even by a jukebox-musical grinch like me    

The Play: Ava: The Secret Conversations; a too-lightly fictionalized recreation of the testy relationship between the midcentury movie star Ava Gardner and the journalist she hired to ghostwrite her memoir Written by: Elizabeth McGovern        Directed by: Moritz von Stuelpnagel One good thing: The video projections of scenes from Gardner’s movies and the photos of the actress with her many famous husbands (Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, Frank Sinatra) and other lovers convey a sense of the star’s mystique One not-so-great thing:  McGovern, who also stars as Gardner, and Aaron Costa Ganis—playing the journalist and all three of the husbands—work hard but are unable to make it clear why we should care about either of these people or their woes    

The Play : Rolling Thunder; a concert-style revue in which iconic songs from the ‘60s illustrate stories about the soldiers who served in Vietnam and the families who anxiously waited for them to come home Book by: Bryce Hallett        Directed by: Kenneth Ferrone One good thing: The singing by a talented cast (all young enough to be the grandkids of people who actually served in the war) is across-the-board terrific, particularly the performances by Deon’te Goodman, channeling all of the soul of Motown; and Drew Becker just as strongly representing the San Francisco sound that also defined the era One not-so-great thing: The narrative adds little to the now-familiar stories of the Vietnam soldiers killed, addicted to drugs and generally alienated when they return home     

The Play: Joy; a bio-musical about the inventor of the Miracle Mop that aspires to be an inspirational tale about an everyday woman doing something extraordinary Book by: Ken Davenport        Music & Lyrics by: Annmarie Milazzo      Directed by : Lorin Latarro One good thing: Betsy Wolfe is simply terrific, bringing her innate charm and radiant voice to the title role One not-so-great thing:  Unable to avoid the usual rags-to-riches clichés, the show is more well-meaning than well-done and it’s hard to get worked up about a mop, even though a few are given away—Oprah-style— to some audience members    

The Play: Transgression, the widow of a famous photographer discovers that 30 years earlier he had an affair with a teenage girl and took museum-worthy nudes of her but now the subject of those photos wants them destroyed Written by: Terry Curtis Fox        Directed by: Avra Fox Lerner One good thing: A real attempt is made to look at all aspects of what to do with good art that’s been made by someone who has done bad things—and at the complicated motives of all the people involved in those wrongdoings One not-so-great thing:  The narrative takes so many detours—the curator’s love life, a sexual encounter the girl’s mother has—that they end up weakening the impact of the main storyline and the ending is a real letdown    

The Play: The Weir, a lovely revival of the now-classic play about a group of people who gather in a pub in a rural part of Ireland where they tell ghost stories that gradually evolve into confessions about the things they truly fear Written by: Conor McPherson        Directed by: Ciarán O’Reilly One good thing: Three of the cast members have played their roles before in earlier productions and they’re now as comfortably at home in them as are the fictional pub’s regulars who sometimes go behind the bar to pour their own drinks One not-so-great thing: John Keating has made a wonderful career playing wild-haired oddballs in various Irish Rep productions and he's delightful again here but I’d love to see him get to show some other colors in his palette