this week in broadway

JUKEBOX HEROES, TAKE TWO: ONCE UPON A ONE MORE TIME / ROCK AND ROLL MAN

Six fairy-tale characters reimagine their future in Once Upon a One More Time (photo by Matthew Murphy)

ONCE UPON A ONE MORE TIME
Marquis Theatre
210 West Forty-Sixth St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through September 3, $59.75-$319.50
onemoretimemusical.com

In May, I wrote about a pair of jukebox musicals, the extremely disappointing A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical, which unsurprisingly received no Tony nominations, and the absolutely delightful & Juliet, which earned nine nods but unfortunately took home none. The former was a disjointed look at the life and career of the Brooklyn-born megastar, while the latter was a clever follow-up to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in which his wife, Anne Hathaway, decides to pen a sequel in which Juliet survives and, leaving behind the dead Romeo, heads to Paris to start a new life, set to existing tunes written or cowritten by Swedish producer Max Martin for the Backstreet Boys, Robyn, Demi Lovato, Bon Jovi, Katy Perry, *NSYNC, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, and others.

Last week I encountered a similar situation when I saw two new musicals, one an unsatisfying biographical chronicle, the other a surprisingly clever reimagining of a fairy-tale world using nothing but songs by Spears, the Princess of Pop, who has sold nearly 150 million records but has won more Golden Raspberries (3) than Grammys (1).

At the Marquis Theatre, Once Upon a One More Time is a load of fun despite a fairly ludicrous setup: After generations of following the rules enforced by the Narrator (Adam Godley), who makes sure to keep every female character in her place from story to story, Cinderella (Briga Heelan), Snow White (Aisha Jackson), Rapunzel (Gabrielle Beckford), Sleeping Beauty (Ashley Chiu), Princess Pea (Morgan Whitley), and Little Mermaid (Lauren Zakrin) start to realize there might be something else out there for them after the O.F.G. — the Original Fairy Godmother (Brooke Dillman) — gives Cin a copy of Betty Friedan’s 1963 game-changer, The Feminine Mystique, which helped usher in second-wave feminism. And they explore their situations through such Spears hits as “Lucky,” “Toxic,” “Womanizer,” “Oops! . . . I Did It Again,” and “. . . Baby One More Time.”

Prince Charming (Justin Guarini) turns out to be quite the dog in Britney Spears musical (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Cinderella is the first to consider that she might have a choice in her future, which upsets the Narrator. “Yes. Listen, I’ve been doing this a long time. And believe me, if I change so much as an intonation, the children go full Rumpelstiltskin,” he tells her. “They want things the same, every time. The narrative is very clear. We’re not here to make fairy tales, we’re here to follow them. Don’t overthink it. Oh, and don’t furrow your brow! We want you delivering lines, not wearing them. There. Better. Happy ever after.”

When Snow notices that Cin appears to be a bit off, she says, “Hey, you seem ‘stuck.’ Doc gives me pills for when I get like that.” Cinderella turns her down, then points out that Snow White’s latest needlepoint, “Happy ever after,” is filled with typos. Snow replies, “Huh. I guess neither of us knows what happy ever after’s supposed to look like. . . . All right, I gotta go get chased through the woods by a terrifying man in pitch blackness.”

When Cin discovers that her Prince Charming (Justin Guarini) is also Snow’s Faithful, the misogyny that is baked into traditional fairy tales rises to the surface and begins to turn things upside down and inside out. Not only do the young women — including Belle (Liv Battista), Goldilocks (Amy Hillner Larsen), and Red (Justice Moore) — start reevaluating the state of their being, but Prince Erudite (Ryan Steele) and Clumsy (Nathan Levy) wonder if they can explore their potential relationship as well. Meanwhile, Cinderella’s Stepmother (Jennifer Simard) and her two stepsisters, Belinda (Ryann Redmond) and Betany (Tess Soltau), lie in wait, willing to play by the rules in order to land Prince Charming or even Prince Brawny (Joshua Daniel Johnson), Mischievous (Kevin Trinio Perdido), Gregarious (Mikey Ruiz), Suave (Josh Tolle), or Affable (Stephen Scott Wormley).

Cinderella (Briga Heelan) discovers a whole new world in a book by Betty Friedan (photo by Matthew Murphy)

If you took Six, & Juliet, Into the Woods, Head Over Heels, Wicked, and Bad Cinderella and put them into a blender, you would come up with something like Once Upon a One More Time. Not all of it works; at two and a half hours with intermission, it is repetitive, and the last fifteen minutes or so should be chopped off, as it basically explains to us what we’ve already seen. The whole Betty Friedan element is still puzzling to me — I understand why they chose that book, but the whole idea of making it a key part of the plot and (sort of) getting away with it is mind-boggling to me — as are the Narrator’s threats to send rule breakers to a place called Story’s End.

Jon Hartmere’s (bare, The Upside) book is otherwise witty and clever, no doubt helped by five-time Tony nominee David Leveaux serving as creative consultant. The crack ten-piece band keeps Spears’s songs down to earth, avoiding haughty orchestrations, although several ballads threaten to go over the top. In their first Broadway show, directors and choreographers Keone and Mari Madrid (Beyond Babel, The Karate Kid) cut loose with ecstatic Spears-inspired dance numbers performed by an exuberant cast.

Anna Fleischle’s appealing set features trees and the facades of houses raised and lowered, an elegant staircase, a multilevel platform laden with stage lighting, a balcony, windowlike screens in the back, and a giant quill in a bubble hanging from the ceiling, daring anyone to grab it and rewrite the fairy tales. Sven Ortel’s projections range from the night sky to scary woods to magic castles, with fanciful lighting and plenty of glowing spots by Kenneth Posner and raucous sound by Andrew Keister.

Many of Loren Elstein’s costumes are based on outfits Spears wore in videos and concerts, with wigs by Nikiya Mathis that further our immersion into all things Britney, as if each fairy-tale character represents a separate part of her history. In her Broadway debut, Heelan is absolutely delightful as Cinderella, a stand-in for anyone ready to burst out with their own story. Jackson (Paradise Square, Waitress) is lovely as Cin’s best friend, Guarini (American Idiot, Wicked) has a field day as the self-absorbed, selfish prince who gets to belt out “Oops! . . . I Did It Again,” and two-time Tony nominee Godley (The Lehman Trilogy, Anything Goes) is just right as the Narrator, who is terrified of change. But two-time Tony nominee Simard (Company, Mean Girls), as she so often does, steals the show as the evil stepmother who always has a plan up her corset.

Once Upon a One More Time bites off more than it can chew, but it’s no poison apple it’s nibbling on but is instead shiny, fresh, and crisp, even if it’s occasionally sour.

While the show is not about Spears’s controversial life — it arrives on Broadway less than two years after Spears was freed from her father’s conservatorship — there are fairy-tale aspects to her early career, followed by bittersweet personal and professional entanglements that titillated the public and impacted her reputation. Once Upon a One More Time helps reestablish that original image.

Leo Mintz (Joe Pantoliano) and Alan Freed (Constantine Maroulis) come up with a plan to spread the gospel of rock and roll in musical (photo © Joan Marcus 2023)

ROCK & ROLL MAN
New World Stages
340 West 50th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Wednesday – Monday through September 1, $90-$164
rockandrollmanthemusical.com
www.newworldstages.com

When my mother was a teenager in the mid-1950s, she would sneak out of her apartment and catch rock and roll shows at the Brooklyn Paramount, seeing all the greats, the originators of the art form. I grew up with that music, treasuring two small boxes of 45s that contained many of the best singles ever recorded, by Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Moonglows, the Coasters, the Platters, the Drifters, and others.

All of those artists and more are featured in Rock & Roll Man, a new musical about legendary DJ Alan Freed (Constantine Maroulis) that is making its New York premiere at New World Stages. It opens at the Paramount with Freed’s 1958 Holiday Rock and Roll Extravaganza, kicking off with my favorite song from that era, “Sh-Boom” by the Bronx-based Chords: “Life could be a dream / If I could take you up in paradise up above / If you would tell me I’m the only one that you love / Life could be a dream, sweetheart.” Unfortunately, after a promising beginning, the rest of the show proves not to be a dream of paradise.

The goofy premise is that on the last night of his life, January 20, 1965, amid Beatlemania and the Vietnam War, the Pennsylvania-born Freed is dreaming that he is being tried in an imaginary Court of Public Opinion by Judge Mental (Eric B. Turner) in the trial of The World versus Alan Freed; with the help of his lawyer, Little Richard (Rodrick Covington), Freed must defend his legacy against relentless prosecutor J. Edgar Hoover (Bob Ari), who has charged him with “the destruction of the American way of life by inventing the genre of music which you named rock and roll,” claiming that Freed is a “fraud . . . a modern day snake oil salesman who concocted this foul form of music solely for the purpose of self-promotion and illicit profit . . . then foisted it on our unsuspecting youth, manipulating them into a world of juvenile delinquency, alcohol, narcotics, and . . . SEX!!!!!”

Through flashbacks, Freed returns to Cleveland, where he got his start in radio, teaming up with Record Rendezvous owner and station advertiser Leo Mintz (Joe Pantoliano) to bring rock and roll to the younger generation. Freed immediately draws an integrated audience, with Black and white teenagers listening to his Moondog Show, hanging out at the record store, and going to concerts hosted by Freed and featuring such acts as LaVern Baker (Valisia LeKae).

Constantine Maroulis stars as controversial deejay Alan Freed in Rock & Roll Man (photo © Joan Marcus 2023)

Freed hits the big time when he moves to New York City and WINS, teaming up with Roulette Records owner and Birdland cofounder Morris Levy (Pantoliano), who allegedly associated with the Mafia. When a district attorney asks him, “Is it true you associate with known mobsters like Vinnie the Chin Gigante and other members of the Gambino crime family?,” he replies, “Look, I grew up in New York City. I know a lot of different people, including a few of the gentlemen you just mentioned. I also know Cardinal Spellman. That don’t make me a Catholic. And by the way, the cardinal loves me. He’s a real mensch.”

Freed and Levy present Little Richard, Frankie Lymon (Jamonté) and the Teenagers, Buddy Holly (Andy Christopher), Chuck Berry (Matthew S. Morgan), Jerry Lee Lewis (Dominique Scott), Bo Diddley (Eric B. Turner), and other breakthrough favorites, fighting off the trend of Caucasian crooners like Pat Boone (Christopher) “sucking the soul [right out of Little Richard’s] songs . . . bleaching ’em lily white,” with the original artists not seeing a penny in royalties when they’re played on the radio or on TV. Introducing Boone’s hot new song “Ain’t That a Shame” — first recorded by Fats Domino, who wrote it with Dave Bartholomew — on American Bandstand, host Dick Clark (Scott) calls himself “one of the good guys playing good clean American rock and roll for all you good clean American teenagers.”

But white performers and producers weren’t the only ones on the take; as Freed keeps growing more successful, FBI chief Hoover comes after him, accusing him of not only corrupting children but of accepting payola, setting up a final showdown.

By including new songs alongside classic oldies, Rock & Roll Man sets itself up with a major problem: Gary Kupper’s (Freckleface Strawberry, Consumer Behavior) original music and lyrics are vastly overshadowed by “Sixty Minute Man,” “Rocket 88,” “Lucille,” “See See Rider,” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” Covington and LeKae rip it up as Little Richard and LaVern Baker, respectively, with strong support from Turner as a singer in multiple groups, far outshining Morgan as Berry and Scott as Jerry Lee. The show might have benefited from a more wide-ranging book from Kupper, Larry Marshak, and Rose Caiola, adding much-needed attention to Freed’s family life; there are perfunctory appearances by his daughter Alana (Anna Hertel) and his wife Jackie (Autumn Guzzardi) — which was not the name of any of his three wives. Notably, one of the producers is Colleen Freed, who is married to Alan’s son Lance from his first marriage.

Rodrick Covington rips it up as Little Richard in Alan Freed biomusical (photo © Joan Marcus 2023)

Director Randal Myler (It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues, Hank Williams: Lost Highway), music supervisor and arranger Dave Keyes (with Kupper), and choreographer Stephanie Klemons only lift the show out of first gear when the classic songs are performed, with Keyes on synth, George Naha on guitar, Lee Nadel on bass, Mark Ivan Gross Sr. on reeds, and Rocky Bryant on drums and percussion.

Tim Mackabee’s two-level set morphs from record store to nightclub to radio station to concert stage. Leon Dobkowski’s costumes capture the feel of the era, enhanced by Kelley Jordan’s fab wigs. The projections are by Christopher Ash, with lighting by Matthew Richards and Aja M. Jackson and sound by Ed Chapman.

Tony nominee Maroulis (Rock of Ages, Jekyll & Hyde) has a charm to him but is not given enough character depth, falling short of Tim McIntire’s more energetic portrayal of Freed in Floyd Mutrux’s 1978 film, American Hot Wax. Emmy winner Pantoliano (Great Kills, Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune) seems more at home as Levy than Mintz, and he sings, too. Ari (Bells Are Ringing, Picasso at the Lapin Agile) is like a grizzly bear onstage as several villainous figures.

There’s no need to sneak out of your apartment to see Rock & Roll Man. If you need to hear “Tutti Frutti,” “Maybellene,” “Great Balls of Fire,” “Yakety Yak,” and “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” — and you do — you can always come over to my place and listen to the original pressings on my Victrola.

GREY HOUSE

Max (Tatiana Maslany, second from right) meets a creepy family in Grey House (photo by MurphyMade, 2023)

GREY HOUSE
Lyceum Theatre
149 West 45ht St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 30, $74-$278
greyhousebroadway.com

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with 1970s horror movies set in houses. I couldn’t get enough of Bad Ronald, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Burnt Offerings, The Legend of Hell House, and the scariest of them all, the “Amelia” section of Trilogy of Terror, in which Karen Black portrays a woman who is terrorized by a Zuni doll. I saw all of them on television, with commercials, but they still terrified me.

I got the same chills watching Levi Holloway’s thrilling Grey House, live and in person on Broadway.

It’s a classic setup: A young couple, Max (Tatiana Maslany, but I saw understudy Claire Karpen) and Henry (Paul Sparks), crash their car during a snowstorm and seek refuge in a strange house in the woods. The creepy, creaky, cluttered structure is run by Raleigh (Laurie Metcalf), “mama” to five children, each of whom has their own proclivities: Marlow (Sophia Anne Caruso), Bernie (Millicent Simmonds), A1656 (Alyssa Emily Marvin), Squirrel (Colby Kipnes), and the Boy (Eamon Patrick O’Connell). They wear gothic dressing gowns and pajamas, speak in mysteries, and occasionally break out into ritualistic songs.

“It’s a call coming from your house / She’s yelling from the window frame / You want to ignore it but there’s nothing else / No one, no one, no one, no one left to play,” A1656 sings early on. It’s a 2018 tune by Mountain Man, “Stella,” that references horror-movie tropes.

The kids scatter when they hear a knock at the door; Max enters the living room and picks up the phone, but the cord has been cut. Henry sits on a couch, worrying about his ankle, which might be broken. “I’ve seen this. All this. I’ve seen this movie,” he says. “What happens?” Max asks. “We don’t make it,” Henry replies. For added effect, there’s a ghoulish doll leaning against a small television on the floor.

Max (Tatiana Maslany) and Henry (Paul Sparks) find themselves trapped in a cabin in the woods in Grey House (photo by MurphyMade, 2023)

When she meets the children, Max tells them, “You don’t need to be afraid.” Marlow responds, “Neither do you,” as she pulls a knife on Max.

To help him heal, the kids offer Henry “the Nectar of Dead Men,” which Raleigh explains is one of the types of moonshine they make and sell.

Impressed by the children’s general efficiency, Max tells Raleigh, “Your daughters are very independent.” Raleigh answers, “They are willful creatures.” They soon show just how willful they can be.

Over the course of one hundred intermissionless minutes, the wind howls. Blood drips. The lights go off and then on again. A devilish glow and smoke seep out of the basement. Characters suddenly appear and disappear. A rocking chair rocks. A game called Show and Hell involves a demonic chalk circle. What’s in the refrigerator changes every time it’s opened. The entire house lets out ghastly groans as if it might collapse at any moment. An old woman (Cyndi Coyne) sings. Every move anyone makes is filled with possibility: trepidation, fear, dread, conjuring, and, perhaps, care and love. Even when you think something bad is coming, you’ll still jump in your seat when it happens.

Successful and original scary plays are extremely rare on Broadway; there have been plenty of frightful musicals — Little Shop of Horrors, Sweeney Todd, The Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, Young Frankenstein — but at their heart they are often romances filled with dark humor.

Grey House contains references to numerous horror classics (photo by MurphyMade, 2023)

Grey House is pure, unadulterated horror. Two-time Tony-winning director Joe Mantello (The Humans, The Boys in the Band) masterfully maintains a constant state of foreboding as the plot unfolds. Like most 1970s horror movies, not everything makes sense; several loose knots are left untied, but more than enough answers are supplied. Holloway and Mantello also expertly sprinkle references to such other frightening classics as Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Beguiled, Misery (a great book and film but failed play, starring Metcalf), and Ju-On.

Scott Pask’s set is a character unto itself, stuffed to the gills with endless objects and secrets; the rafters seem to be closing in on everyone, ready to collapse at the next drop of blood. Rudy Mance’s costumes capture the feel of people trapped in a cabin in the woods, while Natasha Katz’s lighting and Tom Gibbons’s sound honor the genre well.

The cast is exceptional, their perfomances perfectly modulated to prey on the audience’s fears, led by two-time Tony winner Metcalf (Three Tall Women, A Doll’s House, Part 2), who plays Raleigh with just the right amount of perplexity. Karpen (Sylvia, Into the Woods) and Emmy nominee Sparks (At Home at the Zoo, The Killer) are terrific as the couple who have no idea what they have gotten themselves into, their lives changed forever by one harrowing event.

Caruso, who at twenty-one has already excelled in such shows as Lazarus, Beetlejuice, The Nether, and Blackbird, all of which contain some level of terror, is again outstanding as a girl who knows much more than she is letting on, playing Marlow with a cool and eerie self-confidence.

While I can imagine watching Grey House on television on a snowy Saturday night, the place to catch it now is on Broadway; it is scheduled to occupy the Lyceum Theatre through September 3.

PRIMA FACIE

Jodie Comer makes a scintillating Broadway debut in Prima Facie (photo by Bronwen Sharp)

PRIMA FACIE
Golden Theatre
252 West Forty-Fifth St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 2, $31-$335
primafacieplay.com

Jodie Comer is scintillating in her Broadway debut as a British barrister who has the tables turned on her in Suzie Miller’s Prima Facie, continuing at the Golden Theatre through July 2. In fact, it’s only the second professional stage appearance ever for the thirty-year-old Liverpool-born native, who had a supporting role in Fiona Evans’s The Price of Everything in 2010 but gained fame portraying assassin Villanelle in the television series Killing Eve.

In the Olivier-winning Prima Facie — which means “on the face of it” and is pronounced PRIME-ah FAY-see by the author, a former human rights and criminal defense lawyer herself— Comer portrays Tessa Ensler, a hotshot member of the Kings Counsel who specializes in sexual assault cases, often defending men accused of attacking women. For the first half of the ninety-minute play, she prowls across Miriam Buether’s caged set, contained within a neon frame that flashes bright light; Comer rearranges two tables and a handful of rolling chairs as she goes from law school and a courtroom to a bar, her office, her apartment, and her childhood home, where her mother and brother live. A ceiling-high bookshelf surrounds her on three sides, packed with white law journals.

In a fury of words and movement, she boasts about how the law to her is all about winning, doing whatever is necessary for her client. “It’s not emotional for me. It’s the game. The game of law,” she proclaims. She describes her cat-and-mouse legal style with relish. “There’s blood in the water and I let the witness swim on. No one can help him. And he swims right into it,” she explains. “I fire four questions like bullets. Bang. Bang. Bang bang,” she exults with glee. She makes it clear that it’s not about guilt or innocence, telling her colleagues that whether her clients did what they’re accused of or not is none of her concern. “You don’t play God, you don’t decide, or judge,” she says. Later, she explains, “The only way the system works is because we all play our roles. My role is defense, the prosecutor prosecutes; we each tell a story and the jury decide which story is the one they believe. They take the responsibility. . . . If a few guilty people get off, then it’s because the job was not done well enough by the prosecutor and the police.”

But Tessa’s world is rocked when she is sexually assaulted by her coworker Julian Brookes, a man she might have been building a relationship with and who she had previously slept with. Suddenly she is in the witness stand, being grilled by an attorney whose job it is to find holes in her story and to make it look like the act was not a crime but consensual. Even as she spots some of the same tricks she uses when she is the barrister, she realizes that the law is not necessarily about finding out what really happened. “The system I’ve dedicated my life to is called upon, by me, to find the truth. To provide justice,” she says as the prosecution starts its case.

Tessa Ensler (Jodie Comer) watches herself being interviewed in play about sexual assault and the law (photo by Bronwen Sharp)

Originally presented in Australia in 2019, Prima Facie arrives in New York at a watershed moment in American history. On May 9, 2023, a jury found former president Donald Trump liable for sexual assault, battery, and defamation, ordering him to pay $5 million in damages to journalist E. Jean Carroll, who he quickly defamed again. Last month, US Supreme Court associate justice Clarence Thomas was accused of numerous financial ethics violations; his 1991 confirmation hearings were delayed when Anita Hill accused him of sexual harassment. In October 2018, Brett Kavanaugh started serving as an associate justice on the Court following a contentious confirmation hearing that focused on sexual misconduct claims made by Christine Blasey Ford.

Those episodes called into question if, when, and how women’s accusations against men should be believed, bitterly dividing the nation along political lines, with people supporting the man or the woman depending on party. Meanwhile, public confidence in the justice system has been dropping, with approval ratings for state and federal courts and the US Supreme Court all trending downward.

Prima Facie is not a comeuppance for a lawyer who suddenly finds herself a wronged survivor but a cautionary tale warning that all women are susceptible to such treatment, no matter how knowledgeable about the law and regardless of the truth itself. Miller (Sunset Strip, Caress/Ache) puts everyone on notice, showing that the legal system is no game, despite what Tessa was taught in law school and as Kings Counsel, what happens when “a woman’s experience of sexual assault does not fit the male-defined system of truth.”

The fight is relentless; there’s a reason why Miller gave Tessa the last name Ensler, after playwright and activist Eve Ensler, now known as V, who was sexually and physically abused by her father and since 2011 has led V-Day, a global organization dedicated to ending violence against all women and girls on the planet.

Director Justin Martin (The Jungle, Low Level Panic) lets Emmy winner Comer cut free in the first half of the play but slows things down once Tessa reports the crime and is questioned at the police station and later in court. Comer is a whirling dervish at the start, dancing on tables, quickly changing costumes (by Buether) from suit to robes to party outfit, and tossing her peruke (legal wig) like it’s both a charm and a burden she fully controls.

But once Tessa is raped by Julian and decides to pursue charges, Comer explores the character’s self-doubt as Tessa’s grip on the law loosens amid systemic pitfalls that make sexual assault so difficult to prove, beginning with the distrust of the survivor’s claim that it was not consensual. At one point, we observe Tessa watching a video of her interrogation by police, stunned by her lack of confidence in relating her story. “I’d only ever seen video footage of rooms like this one,” she says. “Watching a client’s interrogation while sitting with my feet on the desk in chambers. All my sass and outrage at the tricks the police play. It’s different when you’re in here.”

Natasha Chivers’s lighting illuminates the bookshelves in soft blues and glowing white before suddenly turning to complete darkness; the video design, by William Williams for Treatment Studio, features a monitor suspended from above like a ghost. Ben and Max Ringham’s effective sound highlights an underlying propulsiveness and British musician Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s (aka Self Esteem) cinematic score.

The play, which has partnered with the Schools Consent Project and other organizations, does get preachy as the conclusion approaches and doesn’t hide its point of view — the program comes with a pull-out poster that lists disturbing facts about sexual assault and proclaims, “On the Face of It, Something Has to Change” — but Comer rises above the occasional didacticism by her sheer force of will. It’s a remarkable stage debut for a vastly talented television, film, and now theater actor on the rise.

During Carroll’s civil case against Trump, she was asked why she didn’t scream when he allegedly attacked her; it became a core issue of discussion. During the trial in Prima Facie, Tessa is asked, “Did you say anything else? Scream?” It’s a chilling moment that is likely to make you want to scream yourself.

FAT HAM

Fat Ham reimagines Shakespeare’s Hamlet taking place at a family barbecue (photo by Joan Marcus)

FAT HAM
American Airlines Theatre
227 West Forty-Second St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 2, $45-$242
212-539-8500
www.fathambroadway.com

Last July I saw James Ijames’s delightfully delicious Fat Ham at the Public Theater. The show has made the smoothest of transitions to Broadway at the American Airlines Theatre, with the same cast, crew, and set. If anything, the play is now even better, nominated for five Tonys, for Best Play, Best Featured Actress, Best Costume Design, Best Lighting Design, and Best Direction. Below is an update of my original review, slightly amended to account for the move to the Great White Way, with revised photos and a tiny tweak to the script.

There’s no “To be or not to be” in James Ijames’s rousing, spirited adaptation of one of William Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies, Hamlet. In the Pulitzer Prize–winning Fat Ham, continuing at the American Airlines Theater through July 2, there’s no “To thine own self be true,” no “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,” no “Good-night, sweet prince,” no “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” But to give you the tasty flavor of Ijames’s big queer Black take on the familiar tale, his Hamlet, known as Juicy (Marcel Spears), says, “Ah, there’s the rub” only after Rev (Billy Eugene Jones) shares the secret to smoking pork.

The ninety-five-minute show, coproduced by the National Black Theatre and the Public, takes place in the backyard of, according to the script, “a house in North Carolina. Could also be Virginia, or Maryland or Tennessee. It is not Mississippi, or Alabama or Florida. That’s a different thing all together.” The time is “a kind of liminal space between the past and the present with an aspirational relationship to the future that is contingent to your history living in the south. All that to say . . . I’m writing this play from inside the second decade of the twenty-first century. This world aesthetically sits anywhere in the four to six decades preceding the current moment.”

At its core, the story echoes the original. Juicy’s father, the king (Claudius; Jones), has been murdered by his brother, Rev, who then married his brother’s widow, Tedra (Gertrude; Tony nominee Nikki Crawford). Juicy hangs out with his best friend, Tio (Horatio; Chris Herbie Holland). Everyone assumes that Juicy is destined to wed his supposed true love, Opal (Ophelia; Adrianna Mitchell). Her very protective brother, Larry (Laertes; Calvin Leon Smith), is in the military and suffers from PTSD. Tedra’s best friend, Rabby (Polonius; Benja Kay Thomas), Larry and Opal’s mother, loves drinking and celebrating the Lord.

The play opens with Juicy on the back porch of a suburban home helping prepare for a barbecue party for Rev and Tedra’s bethrothal as Tio watches porn on his phone. “Your daddy ain’t been dead a week and he already Stanley steamering your mom. Cold,” Tio says. “Stanley steamering your mom . . . ,” Juicy quizzically repeats. Tio clarifies, “Eating your momma’s box? Doing the nasty with your mom? That better?” This is not your grandparents’ Hamlet.

Rev (Billy Eugene Jones) leads a prayer before family and friends partake of barbecue in Fat Ham (photo by Joan Marcus)

A few minutes later, Juicy is visited by the ghost of his father, Pap, dressed in white, eerie smoke drifting around his neck and shoulders. Pap wants his son to avenge his death — and to stop eating candy bars unless he wants to get “the suga,” which runs in the family. Pap orders Juicy to split Rev open: “Make his thighs into hams. His intestines into chitlins. Pickle his feet and boil his head down to a skull! Crisp up his belly and dry out his balls and grind them up into a fine powder. Lay that all out on the table, invite over your nearest and dearest, and feast. And then make me a plate.” Pap also belittles his son’s education choices, studying human resources at the University of Phoenix. “Scam. Who goes to college online to learn how to manage human beings. Them things don’t go,” he scolds.

The potential relationship between Juicy and Opal has a bit of a problem that only the two of them are aware of: They are both gay. Meanwhile, Larry has a dark secret of his own. But the party goes on, as Rev sings Teena Marie and Juicy warbles Radiohead’s “Creep,” a kind of replacement for the “To be or not to be” soliloquy: “I don’t care if it hurts / I wanna have control / I want a perfect body / I want a perfect soul / I want you to notice / When I’m not around / So fuckin’ special / I wish I was special / But I’m a creep / I’m a weirdo / What the hell am I doin’ here? / I don’t belong here.” The lyrics represent what so many young queer Black men experience, not wanting to be made to feel invisible and less than.

Juicy uses charades to tell his uncle he knows what he did: “The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of . . . the . . . King. Preacher. He is a preacher in this play,” he tells the audience. The game is on as Rev and Juicy battle it out.

Fat Ham is outrageously funny, featuring superb over-the-top performances by the ensemble. Spears (Othello, A Midsummer Night’s Dream) has a tender gentleness, a softness, to his every move; dressed in all black (the contemporary costumes are by Dominique Fawn Hill), he would fit right in as Usher in Michael R. Jackson’s A Strange Loop, another “big Black queer” character with a complicated relationship with his family and other people who’s trying to figure out just who he is and what he wants out of life. Human resources is probably not Juicy’s best career path. Perhaps Ijames named him after the Notorious B.I.G. song “Juicy,” in which Biggie Smalls declares, “You know very well / Who you are / Don’t let ’em hold you down / Reach for the stars / You had a goal / But not that many / ’Cause you’re the only one / I’ll give you good and plenty.”

Juicy’s (Marcel Spears) father (Billy Eugene Jones) is smokin’ in Fat Ham (photo by Joan Marcus)

Ijames (White, Kill Move Paradise) interjects Shakespeare at just the right moments, as when, after Larry and Juicy share an intimate moment, the latter turns to the audience and delivers one of the Bard’s masterpieces, the poetic speech that begins “What a piece of work is a man!” But Ijames keenly changes one pronoun, and the meaning of the prose is altered following the scene we just watched,

Stacey Derosier’s lighting keeps things bright and cheery, as does Darrell Grand Moultrie’s choreography on Maruti Evans’s backyard set. Director Saheem Ali (Nollywood Dreams, Merry Wives) ably balances the wackiness with the serious nature of so much of Ijames’s dialogue alongside whimsical references to Ms. Cleo, OnlyFans, and sexy muppets. But it’s not all lighthearted fun.

At one point, Tio, talking about what he is learning from his therapist, explains to Juicy, “He said . . . These cycles of violence are like deep. Engrained. Hell, engineered. Hard to come out of. Like, your Pop went to jail, his Pop went to jail, his Pop went to jail, his Pop went to jail, and what’s before that? Huh? Slavery. It’s inherited trauma. You carrying around your whole family’s trauma, man. And that’s okay. You okay. But you don’t got to let it define you.”

Juicy is determined not to follow in his father’s footsteps, trying to overcome the systemic institutional racism that dooms so many Black men and tears apart families. That’s not exactly the same thing as the handing down of the crown from generation to generation of white men and boys — but it has the potential to become the half-million-dollar crown Biggie was famous for wearing.

FRIENDSHIP: SUMMER, 1976 / KING JAMES

Diana (Laura Linney) and Alice (Jessica Hecht) are forced to become friends in Summer, 1976 (photo © Jeremy Daniel, 2023)

SUMMER, 1976
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 18, $84-$338
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

“Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend,” Sarah Dessen writes in her 1998 young adult novel Someone Like You.

YA novels are often obsessed with portraying teen friendships, while adult friendships generally receive less attention. Two current plays anchored by terrific performances remedy that neglect, focusing exclusively on adult same-sex cisgender platonic relationships. In Pulitzer Prize winner David Auburn’s Summer, 1976 two women meet through their young children, while in Pulitzer Prize finalist Rajiv Joseph’s King James two men bond over their love of basketball star LeBron James. While neither two-character show is a slam dunk, they both got plenty of game.

In MTC’s Summer, 1976 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, Diana (Laura Linney) and Alice (Jessica Hecht) spend most of the ninety-minute play sitting on opposite sides of a long, rectangular table, their chairs facing the audience, who they address directly. At the beginning, Diana, an artist and teacher at Ohio State, tells us how much she doesn’t like Alice’s daughter, Holly. Alice, whose husband, Doug, is an economist at the university, then explains how she “sort of immediately hated” Diana but realizes she will have to put up with her because Alice’s daughter, Gretchen, is getting along with Holly. Diana is a much stricter mother who doesn’t hide what she believes is her superiority over Alice. “Parents who can’t or won’t control their kids aren’t upset when you do it for them. They’re grateful and ashamed,” she says, describing Alice as a “sleepy-eyed little hippie.”

Laura Linney and Jessica Hecht play two very different women in David Auburn world premiere (photo © Jeremy Daniel, 2023)

After passing a joint to the serious, sophisticated Diana, the free-spirited Alice complains, “She fucking bogarted it for like five minutes, and I was like, come on, lady, I only took it out because it was the only way I could imagine getting through the next ten minutes before I could make an excuse and leave.” But soon after that they actually become friends, sharing intimate details about their fears and desires, discussing interior decoration choices, a sexy house painter, the sanctity of marriage, highbrow vs. lowbrow television, music, and literature, and a complicated “cashless, self-sustaining system” Doug has developed to barter baby-sitting time in their community.

The final scene takes place about twenty-five years later, when we learn how their two-month friendship impacted the rest of their lives.

John Lee Beatty’s set features a three-sided gridlike wooden backdrop with two doorways that the characters can use as an exit but don’t, sticking around to hear what the other one has to say. Japhy Weideman’s lighting and Hana S. Kim’s projections change day to night, adding blue sky and twinkling stars. Tony winner Daniel Sullivan (If I Forget, Lost Lake) can’t quite get a firm grasp of Auburn’s (Proof, The Columnist, Lost Lake) narrative, which is too slight and gets bumpier as the conclusion approaches.

Tony nominee and four-time Emmy winner Linney (My Name Is Lucy Barton, The Little Foxes) and Tony nominee Hecht (Letters from Max, The Orchard) form a terrific duo, the former firm and direct, the latter loose and quixotic. For much of the show they are separated by the length of the table, occasionally reaching for each other but unable to make contact.

At a talkback following the matinee I saw, they couldn’t stop touching hands and shoulders, as if they suddenly required meaningful physical connection. It also was clear that the two of them have become real-life friends because of the show, which added a lovely note to the afternoon.

Matt (Chris Perfetti) and Shawn (Glenn Davis) bond over basketball and LeBron in King James (photo by Craig Schwartz)

KING JAMES
MTC at New York City Center – Stage I
131 West Fifty-Fifth St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 18, $79-$99
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

Rajiv Joseph shoots and scores with King James, making its New York premiere at MTC at New York City Center.

The play is divided into four quarters, like a basketball game, as two lonely twenty-one-year-old Cleveland Cavaliers fans unexpectedly come together as they follow the exploits of superstar LeBron James, beginning in 2004 and jumping to 2010, 2014, and 2016, four seasons that served as turning points in the career of the leading scorer in the history of the sport — as well as for the two characters.

In February 2004, during the King’s rookie campaign, inexperienced bartender Matt (Chris Perfetti) is desperate to sell the remainder of his family’s season tickets so he can pay off at least some of his numerous debts. Matt, who wants to open a downtown sports bar, is biding his time at the empty La Cave du Vin, playing around with a ball of newspaper and a trash bin, when wannabe writer Shawn (Glenn Davis) arrives, seeking to purchase the tickets. Both men are from Cleveland Heights, Ohio, not far from LeBron’s hometown of Akron; Matt grew up going to games with his father, while Shawn has never been to the arena to see a Cavs match.

After they come to an agreement, their friendship builds over the years: Shawn gets to know Matt’s parents, who run a curiosity shop called Armand’s, the name of their treasured stuffed armadillo; they argue over whether LeBron is better than Michael Jordan; Matt repeatedly explains what the problem with America is; and LeBron moves on to several different teams, forcing Matt and Shawn to reevaluate their loyalty as well as their relationship.

“Being a fan is like having a religion,” Matt says. Shawn replies, “Yeah, and like most religions, it’s rotten to the core. Like at Sunday school, the way they talked to us about Jesus? That’s exactly how I feel right now. Like I’m being punished because He happened to be a Savior.” Matt wisely asks, “Jesus or LeBron?”

Shawn is always the more introspective of the two, pushing LeBron’s choices onto his own identity. “LeBron for the win. LeBron for the win, all these times, and then he just fucking leaves,” he opines after James signs with the Miami Heat. “And I’m like . . . You get burned and you’re like . . . Who am I? Why am I like this? I don’t know. I think maybe I just need to work on myself for a little bit.” It’s those kinds of rationalizations and realizations that lift King James above a mere play about sports to a drama about anyone searching inside themselves, looking to have a better season; the beauty of the show is that you don’t have to know anything about basketball to appreciate it, although it certainly helps if the names Mark Price, Brad Daugherty, David Robinson, and Isiah Thomas ring a bell.

Unfortunately, it takes one seriously bad bounce when it forces race into the equation — Matt is white and Shawn is Black — but it manages to overcome that miss well before time runs out.

Shawn (Glenn Davis) and Matt (Chris Perfetti) reach a turning point in MTC production (photo by Craig Schwartz)

Todd Rosenthal’s set switches from La Cave du Vin, an elegant wine bar that used to be a church, complete with stained glass that gives it a holy feel, further equating LeBron with Jesus, to Armand’s, a messy shop overstuffed with random tchotchkes and knickknacks that are like lost parts of people’s lives. Samantha C. Jones’s costumes range from Cavs jerseys to the cheesy bowling-style shirts Armand’s employees must wear. DJ Khloe Janel keeps the joint rocking in a booth to the right of the stage, where she pumps tunes by Prince, Fleetwood Mac, and others before and after the show and during halftime — er, intermission — just as if we were at an NBA arena. Feel free to sing and dance and say hello.

Tony-winning director Kenny Leon (Topdog/Underdog, A Soldier’s Play) coaches it all like a champion, keeping the rock in play, slowing things down and then going in for the jam.

Joseph (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, Describe the Night) grew up a Cavaliers fan in the 1980s and ’90s, so he clearly knows his stuff, understanding just how much sports is and isn’t life. (The play arrives in New York City at a fascinating point as James, currently a Los Angeles Laker, might retire following a four-game sweep at the hands of the Denver Nuggets for the Western Conference Championship.)

Joseph wrote the part of Shawn specifically for Davis (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, Downstate), knowing when to shoot and when to dish it off to Perfetti (Moscow x 6, The Low Road), who takes the ball and runs with it, hitting layups and swishing from beyond the three-point line.

Basketball metaphors aside, King James is an all-star (sorry) examination of male friendship, the ups and the downs, the victories and the defeats — which I know only too well, having been a Knicks fan for more than fifty years.

As O. Henry wrote in Heart of the West, “No friendship is an accident,” which is ably demonstrated by both Summer, 1976 and King James.

LIFE OF PI

Life of Pi explores religion as a family tries to make a better life away from home (photo by Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade)

LIFE OF PI
Schoenfeld Theatre
236 West Forty-Fifth St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 3, $58-$244
lifeofpibway.com

On the way to my seat in the Schoenfeld Theatre to see Life of Pi, I passed by two women who had purse dogs with them, small pooches who almost, but not quite, could disappear into their laps. Maybe they were emotional support pets (really?), or maybe it’s part of the growing trend of dog owners bringing their animals with them everywhere they go, although I can’t remember ever having seen any beast other than guide dogs in a Broadway house before. But as it turned out, the two pups were quiet and respectful throughout the 130-minute play (including intermission), unbothered by the wild theatrics involving animals happening onstage.

Canadian author Yann Martel’s 2001 award-winning bestseller was first adapted into a 2012 film that was nominated for eleven Oscars, winning four, for Best Director (Ang Lee), Best Cinematography (Claudio Miranda), Best Original Score (Mychael Danna), and Best Visual Effects.

The play, adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti and directed by Max Webster, grabbed Best Play honors at the 2022 Olivier Awards, but, after seeing it on Broadway, I cannot figure out why.

The story is told by seventeen-year-old Piscine Molitor Patel (Hiran Abeysekera, replaced by Adi Dixit on Tuesdays), known as Pi, who has survived a terrible tragedy on the high seas. It’s 1978, and he’s recovering in a hospital in Mexico, being cared for by a Spanish-speaking nurse (Mahira Kakkar).

One day he’s visited by Mr. Okamoto (Daisuke Tsuji), from the Japanese Ministry of Transport, and Lulu Chen (Kirstin Louie), from the Canadian Embassy; the former is compiling the official report of the incident, primarily for insurance purposes, while the latter is there to protect Pi’s interests. The tale unfolds in a series of flashbacks told from Pi’s point of view, starting with his life in Pondicherry in India, where his family ran a zoo: his strict father, Baba (Rajesh Bose), his warmhearted mother, Amma (Kakkar), and his older sister, Rani (Sonya Venugopal). The clan includes Pi’s aunt, Mrs. Biology-Kumar (Salma Qarnain), who teaches the siblings about the importance of the natural world, and family friend Mamaji (Sathya Sridharan), who taught Pi how to swim (which comes in handy when you’re lost in the middle of the ocean). Among the animals in the zoo are Richard Parker the Royal Bengal tiger, Orange Juice the orangutan, a zebra, and a hyena.

Pi (Hiran Abeysekera) battles Richard Parker the tiger in Life of Pi (photo by Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade)

A key exchange early on sets the tone for the show.

Pi: Are you a religious man, Mr. Okamoto?
Mr. Okamoto: That’s a rather personal question . . . erm . . . no . . . not really . . .
Pi: Why not?
Mr. Okamoto: Well faith is . . . erm . . . not something that . . .
Pi: Many of us lose God along life’s way.
Mr. Okamoto: I didn’t lose God.
Pi: Then what do you believe?
Mr. Okamoto: Mr. Patel, I’d really like to . . .
Pi: Please.
Mr. Okamoto: I’ve never been a believer. Religion is a habit rather than a truth. A crutch in times of need.
Pi: So you’re an atheist.
Mr. Okamoto: Yes.
Pi: I respect that. Atheists are believers of a different faith. It’s agnostics I don’t understand. They don’t commit to anything. Choosing doubt as a philosophy of life is like choosing immobility as a mode of transport . . . I will tell you everything, Mr. Okamoto . . . because my story will make you believe in God.

Mr. Okamoto is essentially a fictional representation of the audience, many of whom might not be strongly connected to any organizational faith. The play feels like an evangelical attempt to push religion — any religion — on theatergoers. One afternoon in the market, Pi meets with Father Martin (Avery Glymph) of the Catholic church, Zaida Khan (Qarnain) from a Hindu temple, and Pandit-ji (Sridharan) of a Muslim mosque, testing all three denominations. “I just want to love God,” he tells his sister and parents.

Seeking a better life in Canada, the family boards a cargo ship with their animals, but a terrible storm leaves Pi on a large lifeboat with a few of the animals. It’s like a flood of biblical proportions has wiped out humanity, except for the ever-faithful Pi, who is cast adrift with the hyena, Orange Juice, the zebra, and Richard Parker. When Richard Parker attacks him, Pi ecumenically calls out, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Rama, Sita, Durga, and Shiva.”

While at sea, Pi imagines he is visited by his relatives who were killed in the storm, and from time to time Admiral Jackson (Glymph) stops by to offer survival tips. As days extend to weeks and months, Pi fights hunger as he and Richard Parker struggle to stay alive, talking to each other as they face the unknown.

Back in the frame story, Mr. Okamoto finds Pi’s account frankly unbelievable, demanding the truth so he can close the case and absolve both Japan and the shipping company of liability, but when Pi offers a different version of events, the government functionary has to reevaluate his decision. “Which is the better story?” Pi asks him, as if trying to sell him a Bible.

The stagecraft of Life of Pi can be breathtaking when the narrative avoids going overboard. Numerous people operate the animal puppets, with one of the puppeteers or actors providing the voice; it won’t take long before you stop thinking of Richard Parker as a puppet and more of a vicious threat who can tear Pi to bits. The storm scene is truly scary. The ensemble playfully depicts fish swimming in the ocean or butterflies flitting past, accompanied by projections that further the illusions.

The technical team deserves mountains of kudos: The quickly morphing, magical set and effective costumes are by Tim Hatley, the projections by Andrzej Goulding, the puppet design by Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell, the lighting by Tim Lutkin, and the sound by Carolyn Downing, all of whom have been nominated for Tonys. Nikki Calonge, Fred Davis, Rowan Ian Seamus Magee, Jonathan David Martin, Betsy Rosen, Celia Mei Rubin, Scarlet Wilderink, and Andrew Wilson operate the puppets, with Richard Parker voiced by Brian Thomas Abraham, who also plays the cook, and Orange Juice voiced by Kakkar; the original music is by Andrew T. Mackay.

Abeysekera makes a strong impression in the lead role, able to stand out amid all the scintillating puppetry, but his performance cannot make the audience forget about the overwhelming religious message.

On the way out, I saw those two dogs again; they looked exactly the same as they did on my way in, unchanged by the events of the past two hours. One of the pups let out a big yawn; I can’t say I blame him.

JUKEBOX HEROES: A BEAUTIFUL NOISE / & JULIET

Young and old Neil Diamond (Will Swenson and Mark Jacoby) explore their life and legacy in A Beautiful Noise (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

A BEAUTIFUL NOISE: THE NEIL DIAMOND MUSICAL
Broadhurst Theatre
235 West Forty-Fourth St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 7, $84.50-$318.50
abeautifulnoisethemusical.com

There are few things I dread more in theater than jukebox bio musicals, which generally consist of a fawning, glossed-over book and mediocre orchestrations of famous songs that always sound better on the albums made by the star who’s being celebrated. For every well-received Jersey Boys, about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, there are unfortunate, overblown, clichéd shows about Michael Jackson, Cher, Tina Turner, the Temptations, Donna Summer, and Carole King. That’s not a good track record.

But every once in a while an extremely clever jukebox musical hits Broadway, taking familiar, existing songs and building an exciting and original story around them. Rock of Ages was a hugely entertaining tale constructed out of songs by such ’70s dinosaurs as Styx, Journey, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, and Quarterflash. American Idiot re-created the fictional narrative of a Green Day concept album without Broadway-fying the music. Jagged Little Pill examined American suburbia through Alanis Morissette’s oeuvre. And Head Over Heels smoothly inserted hits by the Go-Go’s into a little-known Elizabethan drama like they were a natural fit.

A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical, scheduled to run through January 7 at the Broadhurst, is a major disappointment. The frame story is that the Brooklyn-born Diamond (Mark Jacoby) is meeting with a therapist (Linda Powell) to explore key moments in his life and career. “This isn’t going to work,” he tells her. He’s not kidding.

The book, by four-time Oscar nominee Anthony McCarten (The Collaboration, The Two Popes), goes back and forth between the present day, as Diamond begins to open up to his doctor, who is making him revisit his songs in the huge volume The Complete Lyrics of Neil Diamond, and the past, as his younger self (Will Swenson) rises from shy Brill Building songwriter to folkie to pop superstar. Along the way we meet his parents, Rose (Bri Sudia) and Kieve (Tom Alan Robbins), his early supporter Ellie Greenwich (Bri Sudia), predatory producer Bert Berns (Robbins), and the women who would become his wives, Jaye Posner (Jessie Fisher), Marcia Murphey (Robyn Hurder), and Katie (unseen).

Neil Diamond (Will Swenson) goes for the glitter in jukebox bio musical (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Tony-winning director Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening, Hedwig and the Angry Inch) can’t find the right rhythm as the narrative meanders, and Tony-nominee Swenson (Hair, Les Misérables) swaggers as Diamond but is unable to embody him as the show presents us with spiritless versions of “I’m a Believer,” “Solitary Man,” “Song Sung Blue,” “Cherry, Cherry,” “Love on the Rocks,” “America,” “Cracklin’ Rosie,” and the obligatory singalong “Sweet Caroline.” (The arrangements are by Sonny Paladino, with orchestrations by Paladino, Bob Gaudio, and Brian Usifer.)

David Rockwell’s set is plenty flashy, with bright lighting by Kevin Adams, standard choreography by Steven Hoggett, and a wide range of costumes by Emilio Sosa. I found myself more involved with the woman a few rows in front of me who kept taking her phone out to video several songs than the actual narrative.

“I don’t . . . I don’t like to talk about myself,” Diamond tells the doctor early on. A Beautiful Noise doesn’t have that much to say about Diamond that we don’t already know (or need to know), so if you really need to hear his music — and you should, because his catalog is one of the best in the business — stream one of his albums or find a tribute band playing in your area.

A delightful cast parties its way through & Juliet (photo by Matthew Murphy)

& JULIET
Stephen Sondheim Theatre
124 West Forty-Third St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 21, $89-$338
andjulietbroadway.com

Meanwhile, something inspiring and exhilarating is happening over at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre, where they are taking a new spin on the Bard, whose catalog is unquestionably the best in the business. David West Read’s & Juliet does a fantastic job with a sensational concept: Anne Hathaway (Betsy Wolfe) argues that her husband, William Shakespeare (Stark Sands), screwed up the ending of Romeo and Juliet, and she has decided to change it so Juliet (Lorna Courtney) actually survives and is now in search of a new life, without Romeo (Ben Jackson Walker).

Soutra Gilmour’s lively set prepares the audience from the start, with the curtainless stage containing a large neon sign of the title, the word Romeo having fallen off, as well as a glistening jukebox ready to fill the room with great music. Bill Sherman’s orchestrations and arrangements will delight you, no matter what your preconceived feelings are about the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Robyn, Demi Lovato, Katy Perry, *NSYNC, and Justin Timberlake. But for good measure, Bon Jovi, Ellie Goulding, and P!nk are added to the mix (and Céline Dion!).

However, the songs were not chosen randomly; they were all written or cowritten by Swedish producer Max Martin, who’s clearly an experienced hitmaker of the highest order. (The conceit of sticking with one songwriter’s work doesn’t always pan out, as evidenced by Bat Out of Hell, with famously bombastic songs Jim Steinman wrote for Meat Loaf and others.)

The story begins in Elizabethan England, as Will is about to present the world premiere of Romeo and Juliet, but Anne steps in the way, asking, “What if . . . Juliet didn’t kill herself? . . . I mean, what do I know, but it seems like she’s got her whole life ahead of her, she’s only had one boyfriend. Maybe she doesn’t kill herself just because he killed himself?”

Against his better judgment, Will collaborates on the new plot, making Romeo a serial cheater and creating a new best friend for Juliet, a gender-neutral character named May (Justin David Sullivan). To avoid being sent to a nunnery by her parents (Nicholas Edwards and Veronica Otim), Juliet takes off for Paris with May and Angélique (Justin David Sullivan and Melanie La Barrie), her nurse and confidante. Anne writes herself into the play and portrays the carriage driver.

In Paris, they go to a Renaissance Ball, where Juliet meets a musician named François DuBois (Philippe Arroyo, although I saw the excellent understudy Brandon Antonio), whose testosterone-fueled father, Lance (Paulo Szot), is the host of the fancy soirée. “As you can see, I play the virginal,” François tells Juliet, who responds, “Me too. I feel like doing it once shouldn’t count.”

Juliet (Lorna Courtney) looks for love in charming Broadway musical (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Pretty soon there’s all kinds of couplings and uncouplings going on as Angélique and Juliet sing “Oops! . . . I Did It Again,” May and François lead the company through “I Kissed a Girl,” Anne and Juliet duet on “That’s the Way It Is,” Lance, François, and May team up on “Shape of My Heart,” and everyone joins in on “Can’t Stop the Feeling!”

Directed with virtuoso aplomb by Luke Sheppard (The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, In the Heights), who turns the proceedings into a kind of affectionate adult fairy tale, & Juliet is a rousing success. It tackles misogyny, homophobia, gender bias, and other forms of social injustice with a playful sense of humor and a genuine heart, from Paloma Young’s elegant costumes, which mix the traditional with the modern, Howard Hudson’s frenzied lighting, Andrzej Goulding’s dazzling projections, and Gareth Owen’s explosive sound. Jennifer Weber’s appropriately energetic choreography keeps it all moving through Gilmour’s set, which includes miniature landmarks, fun furniture, and, yes, a balcony.

Native New Yorker Lorna Courtney (Dear Evan Hansen, West Side Story) is thoroughly engaging as Juliet, a young woman ready to take control of her own life. Sullivan portrays May with a touching bittersweetness, and La Barrie is eminently likable as Angélique, who remains by Juliet’s side even when she thinks she’s making some very bad choices. Two-time Tony nominee Sands (Kinky Boots, To Kill a Mockingbird) and Wolfe (The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Falsettos) make a great pairing as a husband and wife battling over more than just theatrical conventions and expectations.

At its heart, the wonderful show is centered around Emmy winner Read’s (Schitt’s Creek, The Performers) terrific book, which provides plenty of room for character development while never missing an opportunity for a clever literary laugh.

At one point, Juliet declares, “This is already the best night ever, and all we’ve done is leave my bedroom!” Angélique explains, “Juliet, we have to go. If your parents see you, you’ll be forced to join the nunnery.” Anne cuts in, proclaiming, “Well, we will have none of that.” Angélique asks, “What?” May says, “Ew.”

“Sorry, my husband makes puns. It’s a force of habit,” Anne clarifies, even explaining the joke for those who might not have gotten it immediately.

There’s nothing to apologize for.