BROADWAY & ME QUICKIES

The Play: The Dinosaurs, an earnest but ultimately disappointing play about the importance of 12-step programs like AA, filtered through the time-jumping experiences of a group of women who meet weekly to support one another as they share their stories and their struggles to maintain sobriety   Written by: Jacob Perkins        Directed by: Les Waters One good thing: Any chance to see master actors like  April Matthis,  Elizabeth Marvel and  Kathleen Chalfant  is a treat One not-so-great thing: The play doesn’t really say anything new about the challenges of recovery that hasn’t been said in scores of other plays and movies      

The Play: The Other Place; a disappointing modern-day riff on the Antigone story that flirts with themes of grief, incest, infidelity and mental illness but without saying anything meaningful about any of them Written and directed by: Alexander Zeldin         One good thing: Tobias Menzies brings his usual leonine intensity to the role of the uncle who clashes with the play’s version of Antigone over how best to honor—or dishonor—the dead One not-so-great thing: The sound design— little chirps to signal scene changes and ominous clangs to announce “important” moments—was annoying and the visuals didn’t make much sense either, particularly a large and seemingly expensive screen that hovered over the stage at certain points but disappeared during others    

The Play: Making a Show of Myself; a surprisingly moving one-woman show about the importance of the stories we tell one another, and ourselves  Written by: Mary Kate O Flanagan        Directed by: Will O’Connell One good thing:  The Irish-born Flanagan delivers each of the six beautifully crafted monologues about her life in an unusually soothing and totally captivating voice  One not-so-great thing: There’s no set, no costume changes and no major traumas revealed, which may disappoint theatergoers who require heavy helpings of razzle-dazzle     

The Play: Blackout Songs, an Olivier-nominated two-hander about the destructive relationship between a pair of co-dependent alcoholics Written by: Joe White        Directed by: Rory McGregor One good thing: Abbey Lee and Owen Teague give the kind of intense and sexy performances that are sure to be catnip for generations of drama school students eager to show off their own acting chops One not-so-great thing: The play’s elliptical structure successfully mimics the hazy memories that people who drink to the point of blacking out often have but it also left me unsatisfactorily confused about what had and hadn’t actually happened    

The Play: The Disappear; a self-important misfire about the costs of being an artist in which Hamish Linklater plays a narcissistic filmmaker and Miriam Silverman his long-suffering wife who also happens to be a bestselling novelist Written and directed by: Erica Schmidt         One good thing: Brett J. Banakis’ set nicely splits the difference between the kind of early 20th century dacha that would have been the perfect setting for the kind of Chekov play this one so clearly wants to be and the kind of boho chic retreat that so many theatergoers would totally love to own One not-so-great thing: Maybe another director would have been able to get all the actors—a really talented bunch but here grossly underserved—on the same page, or at the very least wouldn’t have staged the final climactic scene so far upstage that most of the audience couldn’t see it, including me who was fortunate enough to have a great press seat    

The Play: An Ark; ; a mixed-reality piece in which viewers strap on high-tech goggles to watch the holograms of four actors—including Ian McKellen and Golda Rosheuvel, the imperious Queen Charlotte in Netflix’s “Bridgerton” series—appear in a 47-minute performance in which they recount an everyman’s life from birth to afterlife   Written by: Simon Stephens        Directed by: Sarah Frankcom       Produced by: Todd Eckert One good thing: It’s cool to watch the holograms and almost impossible not to smile as they seem to make eye contact and reach right out to you One not-so-great thing: It’s scary to watch the holograms and think that this simulacrum of live performances is where theater might be heading