theater reviews: Last News

Although “Stereophonic” is not a musical, it’s easy to get swept up by the terrific original rock songs that throb through it. Three hours and five minutes, with one intermission. At the John Golden Theatre, 252 West 45th Street.And as writer David Adjmi’s play, which opened Friday night at the John Golden Theatre, is set during the mid 1970s, Will Butler’s music sounds authentically of that edgier era.

2 hours and 30 minutes, with one intermission. At the Music Box Theatre, 239 W. 45th Street.The suffragist characters of the musical “Suffs,” which opened Thursday night at the Music Box Theatre, rarely take a breath to celebrate their victories.

What “Lempicka,” the mystifying new musical about Polish painter Tamara de Lempicka, needs more than anything else is turpentine.Two hours and 30 minutes, with one intermission. At the Longacre Theatre, 228 W. 48th Street.Gallons and gallons of it.Unfortunately, having garishly blared open Sunday night at the Longacre Theatre, it’s far too late for the creators to start over again on a blank canvas.And so, the ugly splatter that audiences are left to parse is a ridiculous two-and-half-hour Eurovision act with stratospheric delusions of grandeur.

the musical “The Outsiders,” which opened Thursday night at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, would include a song called “Stay Gold,” I laughed.Wouldn’t you? The words “Stay gold, Ponyboy,” from author S.E.

It’s fair to say Meghan McCain won’t be seeing the upcoming musical comedy “Ghost of John McCain.”The 39-year-old outspoken daughter of the late Arizona senator took to X Tuesday to express her disgust about the off-Broadway musical, which is set to come to the Soho Playhouse over Labor Day weekend. The production will run through Nov. 5 – which is Election Day.“This is trash – nothing more than a gross cash grab by mediocre desperate people,” Meghan quote tweeted a Deadline article about the production.

and an inner child is a deeply relatable idea, even in a cuckoosical such as this one.David Korins’ set of spaceship white-neon frames is more streamlined than past “Tommy’s,” but it’s used so deftly by McAnuff, lighting designer Amanda Zieve and choreographer Lorin Latarro to paint lush and kaleidoscopic stage pictures. Most wouldn’t call this musical a dance show, but Lotarro’s thrilling choreography makes a case for that category.

shuttered “Harmony” was the first, followed by “The Notebook” — this latest lacking musical features a score by PigPen Theatre Co. and a hokey book by Rick Elice.

which last played Broadway 12 years ago, is the sort of not-quite-ripped-from-the-headlines play that could be about any fill-in-the-blank issue that’s on the viewer’s mind that day. It’s relevant by design.Exhibiting restraint — well, almost — director Sam Gold avoids making obvious modern parallels to needlessly buttress its potency.

according to IMDB’s Box Office Mojo.. Domestically, the film’s made more than $86.5 million in its first two weeks in theaters.The Post said that Jack Black-helmed feature, “while nice enough, suggests that the smartest move would be to let the fuzzy guy retire to a calming bamboo forest rather than embark on yet another predictable adventure.”“Dune: Part Two” — director Denis Villeneuve’s epic sci-fi desert flick — managed to hold onto the #2 spot during its third week of release, taking in $8.15 million.“Arthur the King” on Friday sold more than $3 million in tickets, nabbing the No.

a popular movie starring a young Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams. Like Pavlov’s pups, millennials habitually sob during that 2004 film, and the production has seized upon its teary reputation by selling branded tissue boxes. During the final 10 minutes, the noses are deafening.I suspect, however, that it is audience members’ fond memories of the movie and book, more so than the merely pleasant proceedings in the theater, that are prying open their tear ducts.Because as elegantly staged as “The Notebook” is by co-directors Michael Greif and Schele Williams, and despite boasting an appealing cast, the show amounts to a series of un-involving pencil sketches rather than a layered portrait of a decades-long love.Not a single change book writer Bekah Brunstetter has made improves the simple story’s effectiveness.

a hilariously scheming Mary Todd Lincoln who dreams of returning to her cabaret roots, but she’s stuck aimlessly wandering around the White House while unhappily married to Abe Lincoln.The deliciously demented mind behind this inspired lunacy is Cole Escola (who uses they/them pronouns), who wrote and stars as the titular subject opposite Broadway star Conrad Ricamora.In a recent interview, Escola, 37, told the New York Post that the genesis for “Oh, Mary!” came about over a decade ago in 2009.“I loved the idea so much that I was scared to write it,” they shared. “Because I wanted it to be as perfect as I had it in my mind.”But the COVID-19 pandemic helped the writing process along.“I had nothing going on,” Escola continued.

LOS ANGELES — As Universal Pictures prepared for a big night at the Academy Awards with “Oppenheimer,” the studio also celebrated the No. 1 debut of “Kung Fu Panda 4,” which collected $58.3 million in domestic theaters over the weekend, according to estimates Sunday.“Kung Fu Panda 4,” the first film in the DreamWorks Animation franchise since the third installment in 2016, got off to a better start than all but the 2008 original.

John Patrick Shanley’s scorching drama about a nun who suspects the parish pastor of being a child molester.90 minutes with no intermission. At the Todd Haimes Theater, 227 W.

How am I laughing so uncontrollably at a play about Mary Todd Lincoln?Yes, Abraham Lincoln’s wife is the subject of this riotous new comedy at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, written by and starring Cole Escola, that definitely does not aim to teach your anything or challenge your brain cells. Rather, the campy “Oh, Mary!” is too busy daring your lungs to stay full of air for more than a few seconds.

the streamer’s freshman attempt at a stage play is a huge, insufferable embarrassment.Mega-fans of the TV series, like me, will be extremely disappointed by how the live show, which opened Thursday night at the Phoenix Theatre in London, epically fails to conjure the magic and small-town charm of the Duffer brothers’ popular creation. Three hours, plus an intermission.

about the dance. Instead, that climactic event allows the viewer to meet the documentary’s extraordinary subjects and gain a deeper, more human understanding of what their daily lives are like. Unlike the overblown musical, the doc is not excessively and damagingly weighty.

To watch “Hell’s Kitchen,” the new off-Broadway musical by Alicia Keys that opened Sunday night at the Public Theater, is to experience euphoria followed by enormous frustration over and over again. How can we not feel elated being there for the star-is-born moment of actress Maleah Joi Moon, who makes an earth-shaking professional debut as 17-year-old Ali, a fictional stand-in for Keys?Two hours and 30 minutes, with one intermission.

Monty Python would often dryly announce, “and now for something completely different.”Well, not much is different about the revival of “Monty Python’s Spamalot,” the musical that’s based on their 1975 film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” that opened Thursday night at the St. James Theatre.

the musical “Parade” and Tom Stoppard’s play “Leopoldstadt.” The problem is that while “Harmony” is about a sextet of singers whose voices blend like milk and coffee, its elements do not similarly fuse into a cohesive and satisfying musical.The show, directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle, has been tinkered with by Manilow and lyricist/book-writer Bruce Sussman for nearly 30 years, but on its largest stage yet it still doesn’t quite work.Structural flaws that were mostly forgivable when the production played the more intimate Museum of Jewish Heritage downtown last year are detrimentally exacerbated by Broadway’s imposing size. The musical, therefore, is lopsided.

Merrily We Roll Along,” “Sweeney Todd” and final show “Here We Are” are all playing at the same time. Over in London is a sublime revue of favorite Sondheim standards called “Old Friends” at the Gielgud Theatre that’s led by a deep-feeling Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga.Two hours and 30 minutes with one intermission. At the Gielgud Theatre in London.

What’s missed everywhere is passion. In Sondheim’s other experimental musicals — “Assassins,” profiling presidential killers, and “Sunday In The Park With George,” about Georges Seurat’s famous painting — heat arrives in the most unexpected ways and places.