BROADWAY & ME QUICKIES

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    

The Show: The Gospel at Colonus; the story of the death and redemption of Oedipus that Sophocles dramatized in the second of his plays about the tragic mythological king is filtered through the spirituals and other rituals of a Black Pentecostal church service Conceived and adapted by: Lee Breuer        Music by:   Bob Telson      Lyrics by:   Lee Breuer and Bob Telson                Directed by: Shayok Misha Chowdhury One good thing: The music is gloriously performed and the setting looking out over the river from Little Island on a warm summer night is almost as awe-inspiring One not-so-great thing:   Following the narrative can be tricky because three different actors play Oedipus; on the other hand, they—Stephanie Berry, Davón Tines and Frank 
Senior—are all so fantastic that it barely matters    

The Play: Prince Faggot; a speculative narrative that imagines that the now-11-year-old Prince George has grown up to be a gay man struggling to balance the responsibilities that come with being heir to the British throne and his desire to be true to himself and to the mixed-race man he loves Written by: Jordan Tannahill        Directed by: Shayok Misha Chowdhury One good thing: All six members of the cast are played by proudly queer actors and it’s great to see them in roles that so fully explore experiences like theirs without exploiting them or playing them just for laughs One not-so-great thing: The sex scenes are so intense that phones have to be locked in Yondr pouches before audience members can enter the theater—and although they’re beautifully lit and sensitively staged, those scenes don’t really need to be that explicit to make their point    

The Play: Beau: The Musical, a thirtysomething musician looks back at his youth, growing up as a gay kid in Tennessee during the ‘80s and ‘90s while trying to manage his sexual identity, his single mother’s love life and the relationships each of them has with the father who once abandoned her  Concept, book and lyrics by: Douglas Lyons               Music by: Ethan D. Pakchar & Douglas Lyons                                      Directed and choreographed by: Josh Rhodes One good thing: The toe-tapping country-rock score is terrifically performed by an onstage band lead by Matt Rodin and its members are just as entertaining when they double as the show's cast    One not-so-great thing:  It would have been great if the show had spent a little more time with the father/grandfather’s story because it’s one that’s not as fami...

The Play: Trophy Boys, the four-member debate team from an all boy’s high school is given one hour to come up with arguments to defend the prompt on why feminism is bad for women in this satire about patriarchal privilege and toxic masculinity that purposefully casts actors who were assigned female identities at birth to play the male roles. Written by: Emmanuelle Mattana        Directed by: Danya Taymor One good thing: Matt Saunders' set of a classroom at an elite private school for girls—complete with a gallery of she-roes on the wall—is so pitch-perfect that that you can almost smell the mix of book glue and Billie Eilish Eau de Parfum One not-so-great thing: The characters may be male but this is just a variation on the “angry young woman” play in which characters muse about how women are mistreated and then express their anger with some kind of ritualistic dance; Taymor calibrated it perfectly in the Tony-nominated “John Proctor is the Villain” but less so h...

The Play: Low Country,  two desperately lonely people—he’s on parole and struggling to regain visiting rights with his kid; she’s a failed actress who’s returned to their rural South Carolina town with some unfinished business of her own—have a first date that reveals secrets about their pasts and challenges their ability to move ahead unscathed Written by: Abby Rosebrock        Directed by: Jo Bonney One good thing: Babak Tafti and Jodi Balfour turn in committed—and very sexy—performances as the troubled couple One not-so-great thing: The ghost of Sam Shepard haunts this play that is less an homage and more a lesser imitation