Critic’s Pick
Review: What Makes ‘Oh, Mary!’ One of the Best Summer Comedies in Years
Cole Escola’s dragtastic White House farce asks the immortal question: Besides that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?
By Jesse Green
Theater Reviews: Critics' Picks
Critic’s PickReview: A ‘Ulysses’ That Squeezes Bloomsday Into 2 Hours, 40 Minutes
Elevator Repair Service’s staged reading of the huge James Joyce novel retains much of its humor, pathos and bawdiness.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s PickReview: A 10th Life for Those Jellicle ‘Cats,’ Now on the Runway
Resetting the “Memory” musical in the world of ballroom competitions makes for a joyful reincarnation.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s Pick‘Pre-Existing Condition’ Review: Recovering From a Traumatic Relationship
Marin Ireland’s play opens with Tatiana Maslany in a rotating cast of stars, and “What Became of Us” continues its own experiment with changing casts.
By Laura Collins-Hughes
Critic’s Pick‘The Welkin’ Review: Is She Guilty, Pregnant or Both?
A somber yet witty play set in 18th-century England is a clever perversion of a courtroom drama that features strong performances from an ensemble cast.
By Maya Phillips
Critic’s PickReview: A Glorious ‘Titanic,’ Returned From the Depths
Maury Yeston’s score, stupendously played and sung, is the star of the final production of an excellent Encores! season at New York City Center.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s PickReview: In ‘The Fires,’ a Triptych of Stories About Gay Men and Love
Raja Feather Kelly makes his playwriting debut with a spellbinding story of three generations of Black men at Soho Rep.
By Brittani Samuel
Critic’s PickReview: Rocking Out, and Falling in Love, in ‘The Lonely Few’
Lauren Patten and Taylor Iman Jones star in an achingly romantic, softly sexy new musical by Rachel Bonds and Zoe Sarnak.
By Laura Collins-Hughes
Critic’s PickReview: ‘Nobody Cares’ About Laura Benanti, but They Let Her Entertain Them
While poking fun at her own agreeable malleability, Benanti flexes her talents in a show that will be available on Audible, without the physical dimension.
By Elisabeth Vincentelli
Critic’s PickReview: In ‘Mother Play,’ Paula Vogel Unboxes a Family Story
Jessica Lange stars as a ferocious matriarch alongside Celia Keenan-Bolger and Jim Parsons in Vogel’s latest family drama.
By Alexis Soloski
Critic’s Pick‘Mary Jane’ Review: When Parenting Means Intensive Care
Amy Herzog’s heartbreaker arrives on Broadway with Rachel McAdams as the alarmingly upbeat mother of a fearfully sick child.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s PickReview: ‘Grenfell’ Listens to the Survivors of a Towering Inferno
At St. Ann’s Warehouse, this documentary play about a London fire is blood-boiling and aggrieved.
By Laura Collins-Hughes
Critic’s Pick‘Hell’s Kitchen’ Review: Alicia Keys’s Musical Finds Its Groove on Broadway
The retooled jukebox musical, with its top-notch performances and exciting choreography, “stands out as one of the rare must-sees” in a crowded season.
By Elisabeth Vincentelli
Critic’s Pick‘Stereophonic’ Review: Hitmakers Rendered in Sublime Detail
In David Adjmi’s new play, with songs by Will Butler, a ’70s band’s success breeds tension, and punches up the volume on Broadway.
By Naveen Kumar
Critic’s Pick‘Gun & Powder’ Review: Twin Vigilantes Stake Claim to the American West
The musical traces the story of Black twin sisters who pass as white, and exact their own form of justice for the crime of slavery, in 19th-century Texas.
By Naveen Kumar
Critic’s PickReview: In ‘Sally & Tom,’ Plantation Scandal Meets Backstage Farce
The 30-year relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson is the basis for Suzan-Lori Parks’s hilarious and harrowing nesting doll of a play.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s Pick‘Water for Elephants’ Review: Beauty Under the Big Top
The circus-themed love story, already a novel and a movie, becomes a gorgeously imaginative Broadway musical.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s PickReview: With Jeremy Strong, ‘An Enemy of the People’ Is Still Making Trouble
The “Succession” star headlines a Broadway revival of Ibsen’s play about a lifesaving doctor and the town that hates him.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s Pick‘The Effect’ Review: Dissecting the Science of Desire
In Jamie Lloyd’s revival of Lucy Prebble’s play, Paapa Essiedu and Taylor Russell are a couple who fall in love during a pharmaceutical trial.
By Naveen Kumar
Critic’s Pick‘Dead Outlaw’ Review: Not Much of a Bandit, but What a Corpse
The creators of “The Band’s Visit” return with this mischievous ghost story of a musical based on an odd slice of Old West history.
By Laura Collins-Hughes
Critic’s PickReview: In ‘Doubt,’ What He Knows, She Knows, God Knows
Liev Schreiber and Amy Ryan star in a revival of John Patrick Shanley’s moral head spinner about pride, the priesthood and presumptions of pedophilia.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s PickReview: Welcome to ‘Illinoise,’ Land of Love, Grief and Zombies
Sufjan Stevens’s 2005 concept album has become an unlikely and unforgettable dance-musical hybrid, directed and choreographed by Justin Peck.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s PickReview: For ‘Jack Tucker,’ Failure Is the Only Option
Zach Zucker delivers a raucously funny portrait of a catastrophically dim stand-up comic at SoHo Playhouse.
By Jason Zinoman
Critic’s PickReview: ‘Oh, Mary!’ Turns an Unhinged Bit Into Real Theater
Cole Escola’s play, which imagines Mary Todd Lincoln as a frustrated cabaret singer, surprisingly pulls off stretching a stupid joke to its extremes.
By Joshua Barone
Critic’s Pick‘Jelly’s Last Jam’ Review: A Musical Paradise, Even in Purgatory
Did Jelly Roll Morton “invent” jazz, as he claimed? A sensational Encores! revival offers a postmortem prosecution of one of the form’s founding fathers.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s Pick‘Sunset Baby’ Review: Don’t Let Nina Be Misunderstood
Moses Ingram makes her New York stage debut in Dominique Morisseau’s love poem to Nina Simone.
By Juan A. Ramírez
Critic’s Pick‘Between Two Knees’ Review: A Virtuosic Romp Through a Century of Terrors
Two deadly standoffs at Wounded Knee are the bookends for a show that manages to narrate a violent history with moments of light and humor.
By Naveen Kumar
Critic’s PickReview: In ‘The Apiary,’ the Bees Have a Troubling Tale to Tell
Worldwide colony collapse is the subject of a bright, strange, upbeat thought experiment about insect hives, and our own.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s PickReview: In ‘Jonah,’ Trust Nothing, and No One
Gabby Beans shines as a time-hopping protagonist tracing her trauma in Rachel Bonds’s slip-slidey new Off Broadway play.
By Laura Collins-Hughes
Critic’s Pick‘El Otro Oz’ Review: There’s No Place Like (Your Ancestral) Home
A tender reimagining of “The Wizard of Oz” follows Dora, an angsty American teenager who initially rejects her family’s Mexican heritage.
By Laurel Graeber
Critic’s Pick‘Days of Wine and Roses’ Review: Romance on the Rocks
Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James are superb as a midcentury-modern couple free-falling into addiction in Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel’s musical.
By Laura Collins-Hughes
Critic’s Pick‘Once Upon a Mattress’ Review: Sutton Foster as a Perfectly Goofy Princess
The Encores! series returns with a concert staging of the 1959 musical, which also stars the very funny Harriet Harris and Michael Urie.
By Elisabeth Vincentelli
Critic’s Pick‘Terce’ Review: How the Other Half Prays, in a Reimagined Mass
Heather Christian’s latest exploration of the religious sublime is a musical spectacle about the often overlooked “caregivers and makers.”
By Jesse Green
Critic’s Pick‘Appropriate’ Review: When Daddy Dies, a Disturbing Inheritance
Making a blistering Broadway debut, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s 2014 play about the legacies of hatred feels like a new work entirely.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s PickTheater Review: In ‘White Gold,’ Rice Is a Sacred Starch
The family-friendly circus troupe Phare highlights the richness of Cambodian culture with gravity-defying acrobatics, Indigenous music and rousing choreography.
By Brittani Samuel
Critic’s PickReview: In ‘Translations,’ What’s Lost When Language Is Looted
An exquisite revival of Brian Friel’s 1980 play at the Irish Repertory Theater is the first of three there by the Irish author.
By Naveen Kumar
Critic’s Pick‘Life & Times of Michael K’ Review: An Arduous Trek That’s a Marvel to Watch
This captivating adaptation of J.M. Coetzee’s novel, a collaboration with Handspring Puppet Company, follows a man and his ailing mother during a civil war in South Africa.
By Naveen Kumar
Critic’s PickBig Apple Circus Review: A Show That Bends Over Backward for You
The extraordinary within the everyday: A holiday season rite returns with aerialists, trapeze acts, funny clowns (really!) and cotton candy too.
By Alexis Soloski
Critic’s Pick‘Spamalot’ Review: You’ll Laugh in Its General Direction
In the first Broadway revival of the Monty Python musical, the old bits are verbatim but the clowns are running the circus.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s Pick‘Poor Yella Rednecks’ Review: A Writer’s Origin Story Remixes Conventions
Qui Nguyen’s crowd-tickling comedy about a Vietnamese family in Arkansas mixes hip-hop and martial arts with soapy twists and turns.
By Naveen Kumar
Critic’s Pick‘Merry Me’ Review: A Loopy Sex Comedy Focused on Female Pleasure
Hansol Jung’s new play riffs on Greek dramas, the Restoration comedy “The Country Wife” and Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America.”
By Laura Collins-Hughes
Critic’s PickReview: ‘Chicago,’ With Nary a Finger Snap
Barrie Kosky’s Berlin production of the 1975 musical adds a touch of burlesque and a dash of Bertolt Brecht.
By A.J. Goldmann
Critic’s PickReview: In ‘Stereophonic,’ the Rock Revolution Will Be Recorded
David Adjmi’s riveting new play, with songs by Will Butler, is about a ’70s band that nearly destroys itself making an epochal album.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s Pick‘Nosferatu, a 3D Symphony of Horror’ Review: A Lip-Smacking Scare
This creepy Halloween show is the latest visual feat from Joshua William Gelb, presented by Theater in Quarantine and produced in a closet.
By Elisabeth Vincentelli
Critic’s Pick‘Covenant’ Review: When Inner Turmoil Is Its Own Ghost Story
The playwright York Walker makes a promising New York debut at Roundabout Underground.
By Juan A. Ramírez
Critic’s Pick‘Here We Are’ Review: The Last Sondheim, Cool and Impossibly Chic
This inventive, beguiling and not quite fully solved puzzle of a show is a worthy and loving farewell to the great musical dramatist.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s Pick‘The Vanishing Elephant’ Review: Bringing ‘a Thing of Wonder’ to Life
This alluring spectacle at Stage 42, which aims to dazzle audiences 8 and older, makes powerful statements about the rights of both animals and human beings.
By Laurel Graeber
Critic’s PickReview: Nicole Scherzinger Captivates in a Daring ‘Sunset Boulevard’
A stripped-back revival in London, directed by Jamie Lloyd, brings the classic musical into the present day, and gives Scherzinger a career-defining performance.
By Matt Wolf
Critic’s PickReview: In ‘(pray),’ Nourish Thyself With Song and Dance
An exploration of how faith intersects with Black womanhood, through a mix of music, movement, ritual and poetry.
By Maya Phillips
Critic’s PickReview: ‘Merrily We Roll Along,’ Finally Found in the Dark
Jonathan Groff, supported by Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez, is thrillingly fierce in the first convincing revival of the cult flop Sondheim musical.
By Jesse Green
critic’s Pick‘The Confessions’ Review: A Mother’s Tale, Told With Empathy and Care
A new play by Alexander Zeldin recreates his mother’s winding, painful path to a life of her own.
By Laura Cappelle
Critic’s PickReview: At ‘Jaja’s,’ Where Everybody Knows Your Mane
Jocelyn Bioh’s Broadway playwriting debut, set in a Harlem hair braiding shop, is a hot and hilarious workplace sitcom.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s PickReview: ‘Purlie Victorious’ Throws a Comic Funeral for Racism
Ossie Davis’s 1961 play is no period piece, as a blazing and hilarious revival starring Leslie Odom Jr. testifies.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s Pick‘Mary Gets Hers’ Review: A Spiky Update of a Medieval Tale
Emma Horwitz makes her Off Broadway debut with an adventurous retelling of a devotional play from the 10th century.
By Rhoda Feng
Critic’s Pick‘Job’ Review: A Stress Test That Feels Like It’s Life or Death
In Max Wolf Friedlich’s nimble play, a crisis therapist tries to connect with a tech worker who is broken by her profession.
By Juan A. Ramírez
Critic’s Pick‘Dig’ Review: At This Shop, Nurturing Plants and Weary Souls
Theresa Rebeck’s play, a Primary Stages production at 59E59 Theaters, is a beautifully acted dramedy exploring the truth and warped perceptions of it.
By Laura Collins-Hughes
Critic’s Pick‘No Good Things Dwell in the Flesh’ Review: Seeking a Successor
In her new play, Christina Masciotti turns a keen gaze on an immigrant tailor who has woven her business into the fabric of a neighborhood.
By Laura Collins-Hughes
Critic’s Pick‘Infinite Life’ Review: Is There a Cure for Pain and Desire?
Illness is no metaphor, and neither is pleasure, in Annie Baker’s weird and great new play set at a fasting clinic.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s PickReview: In Central Park, ‘The Tempest’ Sings Farewell to Magic
A joyful, bumpy musical version of Shakespeare’s late romance closes the Delacorte Theater before an 18-month renovation.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s PickReview: ‘Next to Normal’ Is Back, With Extra Pathos
A London revival of the hit musical brings extra warmth to the story of a woman in psychological free fall.
By Matt Wolf
Critic’s PickReview: Is William Finn’s ‘A New Brain’ a Stroke of Genius?
Barrington Stage Company’s revival of the 1998 musical brings vocal luster and newfound relevance to the story of a songwriter’s near-death experience.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s Pick‘The Effect’ Review: It’s More Than Chemical
In a revival of Lucy Prebble’s play at the National Theater, in London, Paapa Essiedu and Taylor Russell are terrific as a couple who meet during a pharmaceutical trial.
By Houman Barekat
Critic’s Pick‘Toros’ Review: Why Are We Still Friends?
Old relationships bend, then break, in Danny Tejera’s finely detailed character study of languishing jet-set twentysomethings.
By Juan A. Ramírez
Critic’s Pick‘Cat Kid Comic Club’ Review: Tiny Frogs, Big Imaginations
In a musical based on works by the creator of Captain Underpants, an anthropomorphic feline urges young swamp dwellers (and the polliwogs in the audience) to let their creativity run wild.
By Laurel Graeber
Critic’s PickReview: This ‘Summer Stock’ Cast Is Having a Blast
The Goodspeed Opera House takes on Charles Walters’s 1950 film with zest and humor.
By Elisabeth Vincentelli
Critic’s PickReview: ‘Flex’ Hits the Right Rhythms on the Court and Off
The writer Candrice Jones and the director Lileana Blain-Cruz show a mastery of the game in this play about a girls’ basketball team in rural Arkansas.
By Naveen Kumar
Critic’s PickReview: In ‘Malvolio,’ Hope (and a Title Role) for a Damaged Heart
The Classical Theater of Harlem follows up last year’s winning “Twelfth Night” with a sequel that feels like a sweet summer frolic.
By Laura Collins-Hughes
Critic’s PickReview: A Jew and 16 ‘Nerf Nazis’ Meet Cute in ‘Just for Us’
Is it a stand-up act or a morality play? Either way, Alex Edelman’s look at race, religion and the limits of empathy is at home on Broadway.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s Pick‘Good Vibrations’ Review: The Saving Power of Punk
In a big-hearted musical about a 1970s Belfast record store owner and the punk movement he nurtured, music is the real hero.
By Laura Collins-Hughes
Critic’s PickReview: In London, a ‘Romeo and Juliet’ That Feels Startlingly New
Toheeb Jimoh, Emmy-nominated for “Ted Lasso,” takes on Romeo in a riveting production from the British director Rebecca Frecknall.
By Matt Wolf
Critic’s Pick‘Wet Brain’ Review: A Vodka-Spiked Horror Show
The children of a severely alcoholic widower navigate his incapacity, and his legacy, in John J. Caswell Jr.’s pitch-black comedy about addiction.
By Laura Collins-Hughes
Critic’s PickReview: In ‘Days of Wine and Roses,’ Two Souls Lost in an Ocean of Booze
In Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel’s jazzy new musical, Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James are a glamorous couple succumbing to alcoholism.
By Laura Collins-Hughes
Critic’s PickReview: In ‘The Comeuppance,’ a Bigger, Chillier Big Chill
In his haunting new play, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins updates the reunion genre with too much jungle juice and an otherworldly visitor.
By Jesse Green
Critic’s Pick‘Primary Trust’ Review: Sipping Mai Tais, Until Bitter Reality Knocks
In Eboni Booth’s new play, William Jackson Harper performs with astonishing vulnerability as a man alone and adrift.
By Naveen Kumar
Critic’s Pick‘The Beautiful Lady’ Review: A Cabaret for the New Order
Artists and dreamers sing of revolution in a musical set on the cusp of the birth of the Soviet Union.
By Elisabeth Vincentelli
Critic’s PickReview: In ‘Dimanche,’ a Climate Emergency Comes to Stay
Tornadoes whoosh dinner from the table and a shark swims through a flooded living room in a clown show that brings the environmental crisis home.
By Alexis Soloski
Critic’s Pick‘Hong Kong Mississippi’ Review: The Bluesman Next Door
Wesley Du explores complex intersections of identity in a coming-of-age story about a Chinese American boy who finds escape in Black music.
By Naveen Kumar
Critic’s Pick‘Summer, 1976’ Review: The Path to Freedom Starts With a Friendship
Two mothers make a life-altering connection during a play date in this production for the Manhattan Theater Club.
By Laura Collins-Hughes
Critic’s Pick‘Breathless’ Review: Shopping Soothes an Anxious Mind
Laura Horton’s poignant comic monologue at 59E59 Theaters, part of the Brits Off Broadway festival, delivers a sympathetic portrayal of a sample-sale hoarder.
By Laura Collins-Hughes
Critic’s PickReview: In ‘The Thanksgiving Play,’ Who Gets to Tell the Story?
Larissa FastHorse’s comedy of performative wokeness is also a brutal satire of American mythmaking.
By Jesse Green
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