BROADWAY & ME QUICKIES

The Play: Shifters; it's basically just a when-will-they-get-together romcom about a working-class Nigerian British man named Dre; and an upper-middle class Congolese-British woman named Des (short for Destiny) but it's so sweet and engaging that it's easy to see why this two-hander was nominated for the Oliviers’ Best New Play alongside such heavyweights as Kyoto, Fear of 13 and Giant   Written by: Benedict Lombe        Directed by: Lynette Linton One good thing:  Part of what makes this one so special is how it portrays its black characters as people with the kind of everyday problems everyone shares instead of treating them as avatars for various social issues and although the Olivier-nominated Heather Agyepong was out at my performance, Daniel Ezra is so totally charming as Dre that it’s impossible not to route for him One not-so-great thing:  The constant jumping back and forth over the couple’s nearly two-decade-long relationship can make ...

The Play: The Potluck; a meta-musical fantasia— part docudrama, part meditation on generational trauma and part political call to arms — about the aftermath of the 1979 Greensboro Massacre in which five labor organizers were gunned down by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party  Written by: César Alvarez        Directed by: Sarah Benson One good thing: Similarities between the political situation in 1979 and current events when social justice activists like Renee Good and Alex Pretti have been killed are undeniable and are most dramatically brought home in the 7-minute excerpt from a documentary that Alvarez’s mom made after the murder of her friends  One not-so-great thing: But the narrative here meanders, too often veering into the self-indulgent (random ruminations on queerness) and the cutesy (a number with dancing mops) and, with the exception of one or two ballads, the score creates more of a vague vibe than a clarifying through-li...

The Play: Henry VI: A Trilogy in Two Parts, the National Asian American Theatre Company’s fully-gratifying production of Shakespeare’s rarely-done trio of plays about the British civil wars known as the War of the Roses which also serve as a prequel to the more popular Richard III Written by: William Shakespeare        Adapted and Directed by: Stephen Brown-Fried One good thing: There’s a lot to love here, starting with the terrifically committed performances of the cast, led by Teresa Avia Lim as a kick-butt Queen Margaret, one of the Bard’s best female roles; Julyana Soelistyo, deliciously devilish as the Duke of Gloucester who will become Richard III; and Jon Norman Schneider as the well-meaning but weak-willed king; but equally great are the kinetic staging with inventively choreographed battle scenes and even the stylish, albeit slightly wacky, costumes by threeASFOUR, the design collective whose other clients have included Yoko Ono and Lady Gaga One not-so-g...

The Play: A Walk on the Moon;  a musical based on the 1999 movie about a working-class Jewish housewife who finds herself falling for a hunky hippie-type guy during the pivotal the summer of 1969 when the nation is riveted by the first moon landing, the want-more-from-life stirrings of feminism have begun to affect average women and the Woodstock music festival is about to take place not too far away from the bungalow colony where she and her kids are vacationing while her nice-guy husband works in the city  Book & Additional Lyrics by: Pamela Gray        Music and Lyrics by: Annmarie Milazzo One good thing: The leads—particularly Talia Suskauer, Max Chernin as her cuckolded husband and Sophie Pollono as their teenaged daughter—sing well and work hard to flesh out their somewhat underwritten characters One not-so-great thing: Sorry but there are so many things; the most egregious may be that neither the writers nor director Sheryl Kaller offer a comp...

The Play: The Loved Ones; a gentle drama about a woman running an Airbnb in a rural part of Ireland who finds herself uneasily hosting a quirky American tourist, the grieving widow of the innkeeper’s son who died six months earlier and a young woman who says she was the dead man’s lover and is seven months pregnant with his child Written by: Erica Murray        Directed by: Nicola Murphy Dubey One good thing: It's really refreshing to have adult female-centered issues—infertility, infidelity, single motherhood, sisterhood and loneliness—treated with the same gravity that issues particular to men—gay or straight—regularly get; plus the top-notch cast (Maryann Plunkett, Donna Lynne Champlin, Clare O'Malley and Alana Raquel Bowers) skillfully sidesteps potential clichés as they go about their storytelling One not-so-great thing: The pacing is slow and the story might have been just effectively told in one act instead of two    

The Play: The Last Ship; a new adaptation of the 2014 musical about the closing of a shipyard in the northeast of England and its effect on the community of people whose families have worked there for generations  Music and Lyrics by: Sting       Book by: Barney Norris    Directed by: Leo Warner One good thing: This passion project was inspired by Sting's childhood and the rock star's love for the people he left behind is evident not only in his decision to lead the cast this time out but even more so in his gorgeous score filled with ballads and choral numbers, many of them set to the Celtic rhythms from his childhood and all beautifully performed by a largely British cast enhanced by a Met chorus for this very short run that ends June 14 One not-so-great thing: While the production is beautifully staged with some eye-popping visuals, the sound is off, making it difficult at times to understand what’s being said or sung