Late in the first act of “Mr. Saturday Night” there’s a charming musical number called “Timing” which strikes to the core of any comedian’s skill, and, at the same time, epitomizes all that is perfectly entertaining about this pleasing new musical comedy. The show is also all about Billy Crystal, whose timing for his generation of comics is arguably non-pareil. The show’s adapted, pretty faithfully, from his 1992 movie. Now, as then, Crystal plays Buddy Young, a retired cu

Even with the deluge of news about sexual abuse at all levels of society in the last two decades, Paula Vogel’s drama HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE is as deserving of the Pulitzer Prize now as it was in 1998. The enduring power of this superbly crafted, sensitively staged and brilliantly acted memory play is the power of memory itself. And to underscore the drama’s timeless value, the principal actors - an equally astonishing Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse - twenty-five years

The Playbill for the musical PARADISE SQUARE credits a dramaturg, but she didn’t make much difference. The book, credited to three playwrights including the versatile Craig Lucas (“An American in Paris, “Light in the Piazza”) is a jumbled mess, with plotlines tripping over each other, principal conflicts undefined and an ambitious reach for contemporary political relevance. The time is 1863, the place is a tiny corner of tenement slums in Lower Manhattan called Five Point

Michael R. Jackson’s in-your-face, scorching musical A STRANGE LOOP, winner of the Tony Award for Best Musical 2022, is the most probing, post-adolescent, coming-of-age story musical theater has seen. The journey of Jackson’s protagonist, Usher (an astonishing Jaquel Spivey, making his professional debut) - an overweight, single, 25 year-old gay African American writing a musical about an overweight, single, 25 year-old gay African American writing a musical - is also wi

Sooner or later, every play seems to get a Broadway revival, including “Funny Girl”, the 1964 bio-musical about Ziegfeld comedian Fanny Brice. After nearly 60 years, the show that catapulted a young Barbra Streisand to stardom is back, making a good case for why it wasn’t revived before: the book is not among Broadway’s best and there is only one Barbra Streisand. A thoroughly likable Beanie Feldstein who tackles the Brice role is adequate. Songs have been rearranged for he