The Glass Menagerie (Booth)

By Harry Forbes

This is the second production of Tennessee Williams’ classic play in two years, and if you remember that Roundabout mounting with Judith Ivey (or even the Jessica Lange Broadway revival of 2005), and are wondering whether this present one is worth your time, the answer is a resounding yes.

The production played in Cambridge earlier this year at the American Repertory Theater where it deservedly received rapturous reviews.

Cherry Jones is indeed magnificent as Amanda Winfield, overbearingly domineering mother of budding writer Tom (Zachary Quinto) and lame, painfully shy daughter Laura (Celia Keenan-Bolger). Brian J. Smith is the Gentleman Caller whom Tom brings home from the factory on his mother’s bidding in the hopes of finding a suitor for Laura.

Jones is in full command of her craft and dominates her scenes with the sheer force of her personality and emphatic body language. She’s so powerful from even her first moments on stage, in fact, that one almost fears she’ll have nothing to build up to, but she sustains the energy throughout, and demonstrates more than do many other Amandas how desperate she is for her children’s well being, rather than just a woman pathetically clinging to a more genteel past, now long gone.

For all her ferocity, Jones skillfully plays the humorous moments, such as her primping and flirtatious coyness when she puts on her old cotillion dress from her Southern belle days to impress the Gentleman Caller.

She’s far from the whole show, however, as narrator Quinto makes an outstanding, sensitive Tom refreshingly individual in the vocal cadences of his monologues, Keenan-Bolger an exquisitely fragile Laura, and Smith an exceptionally sympathetic Jim. The candlelit scene between him and Laura has truly never been more affecting. In that scene and every other, John Tiffany’s direction is highly perceptive.

One of Tiffany’s most interesting stylistic touches is Laura’s first appearance as Tom summons her to memory. It could have been gimmicky, but works memorably. (Steven Hoggett is credited with movement.)

Bob Crowley’s abstract set design is on the spare side. And if you sit near the back of the orchestra, as I did, you won’t see the symbolic separate platforms on which the Wingfield living and dining rooms play out, nor the moat beneath, nor the full reach of the abstract fire escape, just the few bits of furniture against a black void. Still, the performances are so good that they’d register even on a bare stage. Natasha Katz has provided the moody lighting

Clive Goodwin’s sound design makes everything crystal clear even in the far reaches of the theater, and Nico Muhly’s musical score sets the otherworldly mood for this memory play.

(Booth Theatre. 222 W 45th Street, Telecharge.com, or 212-239-6200; through Feb. 23)

Photo: Michael J. Lutch

The Winslow Boy (Roundabout Theatre Company)

By Harry Forbes

This latest revival of Terence Rattigan’s sturdy, beautifully crafted 1946 play is first-rate in every way. The production hails from London’s Old Vic where it was mounted early this year with different actors, but there’s nary a weak link in Roundabout’s cast. Director Lindsay Posner directs again, with the action playing out on Peter McKintosh’s beautiful period set.

It is 1912, and 14-year-old cadet Ronnie Winslow (Spencer Davis Milford) has been sent home from the naval academy charged with stealing a five pound postal order. The family – mother Grace (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), sister Catherine (Charlotte Parry), brother Dickie (Zachary Booth) – fear the father Arthur’s (Roger Rees) wrath.

But, in fact, once Arthur is convinced of his boy’s innocence, he is willing to endure any emotional or financial hardships to pay for Ronnie’s defense and publish his son’s innocence, a case that will pit private rights versus the public good. And Arthur is willing to sacrifice Dickie’s Oxford education, Catherine’s engagement, and the household staff in the process.

He enlists a celebrity barrister Sir Robert Morton (Alessandro Nivola) who, in the brilliant first half curtain closer, ferociously interrogates the boy to determine his culpability in the theft.

Rattigan based the play on a real-life incident, involving a boy named George Archer-Shee who, ironically, would die in World War I.

One marvels anew at the skill of the play’s construction. Unlike Broadway’s concurrent “A Time to Kill” and so many other courtroom dramas, “The Winslow Boy” never gives us the courtroom scenes (though the superb 1948 film with Robert Donat did), but rather we hear of the proceedings through accounts of those who attend the hearings.

The fact that the alleged theft is such a minor offense, and even Ronnie himself has, in short order, moved past it as he now settled into a new school, makes Arthur’s fervor for justice all the more intriguing. But even sister Catherine feels compelled to see the case through to the bitter end. “All that I care about is that people should know that a Government Department has ignored a fundamental human right and that it should be forced to acknowledge it,” she states.

Rees’ physical transformation over the play’s four acts, as we see the toll exacted by the emotional strain, is masterful, and Parry as his chief ally, his suffragette daughter, is equally commanding.

Mastrantonio is the very model of a British matron, etching her character with compassion and spirit. In one of her most emotional scenes, she berates her husband for pursuing the case out of pride. Booth is spot on as the superficial older son most focused on playing his gramophone as he learns the latest dance craze.

Nivola is has the requisite authoritative manner of Sir Robert. Michael Cumpsty does his usual impeccable work, here as the Catherine’s rejected suitor Desmond, the family solicitor. And Henny Russell is delightful as a not-quite-proper parlor maid, whose faux pas propel the action at key points.

McKintosh's costumes, David Lander’s lighting and Drew Levy’s sound design are further assets to this classy production.

This is the second Rattigan winner for the Roundabout in as many years, coming as it does after their mounting of the relatively rare “Man and Boy.” Let's hope there are more to come.

(American Airlines Theatre on Broadway, 227 West 42nd Street, 212-719-1300 or www.roundabouttheatre.org ; through Dec. 1)

A Time to Kill (Golden Theatre)

By Harry Forbes

John Grisham’s 1989 legal thriller -- filmed in 1996 with Matthew McConaughey and Kevin Spacey – comes up as a reasonably stage worthy courtroom drama in Rupert Holmes’ expert adaptation.

The story of an ambitious and not completely altruistic lawyer Jake Brigance (Sebastian Arcelus), who defends a black man Carl Lee Hailey (John Douglas Thompson) who has shot two white men who savagely raped his 10-year-old daughter, against an opportunistic district attorney Rufus Buckley (Patrick Page) with gubernatorial aspirations, holds your interest through its two acts, thanks to good performances and Ethan McSweeny’s resourceful direction.

Though most of the action takes place in the Mississippi courtroom, James Noone’s turntable set allows for a variety of perspectives and a couple of other locales (including Jake’s office and the outer office of the courtroom).

Was Carl Lee’s action justifiable homicide in a town where the culprits were sure to get an easy sentence? Is vigilantism ever permissible? Is there ever, as the Bible says, “a time to kill”? Are the lawyers more interested in career advancement and publicity than the cause they are defending? The answers are left to the audience. And indeed the judge and attorneys present their arguments across the footlights. That conceit first seems contrived, but ultimately works.

The show is well cast across the board. Arcelus (looking not unlike McConaughey) and Page make plausible adversaries, with Page particularly relishing the corrupt politician part. Though Arcelus has a dramatic role in TV’s “House of Cards” series, his past Broadway roles have all been musicals (e.g. “Elf,” “Jersey Boys”), but he demonstrates here he can move with ease between the genres. He's effective and sympathetic in the part.

The great classical actor Thompson plays Carl Lee with power and pathos. Tonya Pinkins shines in her brief scenes as Carl Lee’s uncomprehending but supportive wife. With his real-life political background, Fred Dalton Thompson comes across as a fully convincing judge. And Ashley Williams is appealing as a law school graduate jockeying to be Jake’s law clerk.

Lee Sellars and Dashiell Eaves are the scurvy villains, but reappear later in the play with some neat doubling.

Tom Skerritt proves a particular audience favorite as an alcoholic lawyer who has seen better days, and had not been, any more than Jake or Buckley, exactly a paragon of moral rectitude either.

Some familiar with the book and the movie may not find the story worth revisiting, however competently done, but the audience at my performance was completely absorbed, as was I, and I’d count Grisham’s Broadway debut (for this is the first of his works to be so adapted) a promising one.

(John Golden Theatre, 252 West 45th Street; Telecharge.com or 212-239-6200.)

Photo: Fred Dalton Thompson, John Douglas Thompson, and Sebastian Arcelus in Broadway's A TIME TO KILL. (c) Carol Rosegg

Romeo and Juliet (Richard Rodgers Theatre)

Photo: Carol Rosegg

By Harry Forbes

Movie heartthrob Orlando Bloom makes an impressive Broadway debut as Shakespeare’s legendary lover, demonstrating an assured mastery of the text, real stage presence, and the ability to offer a detailed characterization.

He has been cast opposite the lovely Condola Rashad who has gone from strength to strength in her prior stage appearances, but alas, on this occasion, falls short both in her interpretation and her command of the text. Audibility is sometimes a problem, too, as words are lost as she rushes the dialogue in conveying Juliet’s youthful ardor.

And so it goes with the rest of the cast in David Leveaux’s often gimmicky production which is never revelatory, and the conceit of having black actors as the Capulets and white ones as their bitter rivals, the Montagues, adds little of substance.

On the plus side, we have Jayne Houdyshell’s accomplished Nurse, Brent Carver’s uncliched take on Friar Lawrence, and Christian Camargo’s verbally dexterous Mercutio. But Chuck Cooper and Roslyn Ruff’s Lord and Lady Capulet are fairly one note caricatures.

The production (designed by Jesse Poleschuck with costumes by Fabio Toblini) is more or less modern dress with Italianate touches but the period is, on the whole, non-specific. Romeo arrives on a motorcycle, and some of the gang fighting is not unlike the skirmishes in “West Side Story.”

I much preferred Michael Grief’s superb Central Park staging in 2007, with Oscar Isaac and Lauren Ambrose in masterful form, with a uniformly excellent supporting cast, while this Cliff Notes version – as someone aptly categorized it after the show, referring to the cut text – feels rushed, perfunctory, and a bit dull, despite such flourishes as Poleschuck’s rows of flame which rise and fall at key moments.

(Richard Rodgers Theatre, 226 West 46th Street, Ticketmaster.com or 800-745-3000)

Love’s Labour’s Lost (The Public Theater)

Photo: Joan Marcus

By Harry Forbes

The Public has a winner in this full-out musical version of Shakespeare’s wordy early comedy, which jettisons much of the arcane text, but remains utterly true to the essence of the piece.

Alex Timbers, who adapted the book and directed, and Michael Friedman, who composed the songs, have reunited after their “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” success, but what they have fashioned here is more in the vein of a traditional Broadway musical, one very much in the style of the John Guare-Galt MacDermot “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” which, we’re told, served as a template for this one.

And like “Two Gentlemen,” the score covers myriad genres – from rock to doo wop to Broadway -- which bubble most delightfully throughout the intermission-less 100 minutes.

Reset in a New England town (a beautiful eye-filling set by John Lee Beatty, and spot-on costumes by Jennifer Moeller), the King of Navarre and his three comrades – who have sworn off women for academic pursuits -- have returned for a five-year college reunion, and the Princess of France and her entourage are young women with whom they had perhaps dallied years before.

The transposition works exceedingly well. I particularly enjoyed the Russians of the final act now amusingly transformed into East German performance artists.

The cast is wonderful across the board, excelling in their Shakespearean line readings as much as their musical turns. Daniel Breaker’s Navarre and Colin O’Donnell’s Berowne are outstanding, with top-notch work from Lucas Near-Verbrugghe as Dumain and Bryce Pinkham as Longaville.

The women have less stage time, but Patti Murin as the Princess, Maria Thayer as Rosaline, Audrey Lynn Weston as Katherine, and Kimiko Glenn as Maria all have their opportunities to shine. The part of wench Jaquenetta has been built up and Rebecca Naomi Jones fills it beautifully, stopping the show with her “Love’s a Gun.” Rachel Dratch is very funny as a gender-bending Holofernes, and Jeff Hiller her equally pretentious sidekick Nathaniel.

There’s amusing work from Charlie Pollock as the slow-witted Costard, Andrew Durand as Boyet, Justin Levine as Moth, and Kevin Del Aguila as Dull.

The dialogue, though rendered with American cadences, excepting Caesar Samayoa’s hilariously loopy Spanish swain Don Armado, is delivered with consistent intelligence.

Timbers’ assured direction captures just the right tone, and there’s some nifty choreography by Danny Mefford. His “Chorus Line” homage (led by Pinkham) is especially clever.

The handsome production – for all its high spirits and intentional goofiness – ends on an appropriately melancholy tone, as it should.

It would be a shame if the show vanished after another week. Perhaps a Broadway transfer is in the offing, even if Shakespeare can be a dicey commercial proposition. But I suspect this might have wider appeal than the teams “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.” In any case, here’s hoping the score at least gets recorded.

(The Delacorte Theater, Central Park, 81st St. & Central Park West or 79th St. & Fifth Ave, free ticket distribution; 212-967-7555 or www.shakespeareinthepark.org; through August 18 only)

First Date (Longacre Theatre)

By Harry Forbes

On the unpromising premise of a blind date unfolding in real time, with all of the action confined to the restaurant where a mismatched couple meet, emerges a most delightful show, and a definite crowd-pleaser.

With a sharp, funny book by Austin Winsberg, amusing songs by Alan Zachary and Michael Weiner, and thoroughly engaging performances by leads Zachary Levi and Krysta Rodriguez, the pace never flags for its 95 intermission-less minutes. Though it sounds like one big cliché, Winsburg and the team have found fresh twists and the show plays like a good Neil Simon comedy with songs.

Rodriguez is Casey, no stranger to blind dates, and with an unfortunate penchant for bad boys. Levi is Aaron, new to the whole routine, and still smarting over his breakup with Allison. They’ve been brought together by Casey’s sister’s husband who had a hunch they might click.

Needless to say, things don’t go well, with Aaron putting his foot in his mouth at every opportunity, and Casey giving off an off-putting, abrasive vibe.

Allison, the bar’s waiter and various other characters, past and present, are played by a talented ensemble of five actors (Bryce Ryness, Kristoffer Cusick, Blake Hammond, Sara Chase, and Kate Loprest) who provide running commentary (and advice) in the minds of the protagonists.

Hammond’s hammy waiter, one with songwriting aspirations, is a standout, and Cusick generates laughs for his manic portrayal of Casey’s gay pal constantly calling her with “bailout” messages, in case she should need them, though the humor palls after a while.

Bill Berry directs smartly, bringing out the humor and sentiment of the material.

The show was originally done last year at The 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle (co-produced by A Contemporary Theatre) where it garnered good reviews and awards.

This is one of those intimate shows that could just have easily been mounted Off-Broadway, but with David Gallo’s snazzy set and projections, it looks just fine on the Longacre stage. I predict a popular afterlife in regional theater and schools.

(Longacre Theatre, 220 W. 48th St., 212-239-6200 or Telecharge.com)

The Comedy of Errors (The Public Theater)

By Harry Forbes

“The Comedy of Errors” may not be in the exalted category of Shakespeare’s later comedies, like “Twelfth Night” or “As You Like It,” but there’s no doubt that, in the right hands – even without the added delights of Rodgers and Hart (they adapted the comedy in their 1930s hit “Boys from Syracuse”) – it can be side-splittingly funny.

And, in the fast-moving, intermission-less production of Daniel Sullivan, it is most definitely in the right hands.

Set in 1940s upstate New York, a poster of Eddie Cantor’s “Roman Scandals” movie plastered on a wall as perhaps a sly nod to the play’s roots in Roman playwright Plautus (set by John Lee Beatty), the story of twin masters and servants separated as infants during a shipwreck updates very neatly indeed.

And though not a musical, there is, in fact, plenty of music of the Swing variety, along with some virtuoso jitterbugging (choreography by Mimi Lieber) during the scene changes.

Hamish Linklater and Jesse Tyler Ferguson double as both sets of twins, the masters Antipholus and servants Dromio, a concept which works brilliantly in their expert performances. The ending – when all the confusion is finally sorted out, and all four characters are traditionally onstage together – is accomplished satisfactorily in a way I won’t spoil.

As Antipholus of Ephesus’ thoroughly confused wife Adriana, Emily Bergl is very funny indeed, and she’s evenly matched by Heidi Schreck as her sister Luciana who mistakenly believes she’s falling in love with her sister’s husband.

Others in the standout cast include De’Adre Aziza as the Courtesan who thinks she’s been deceived by Antipholus and sings a deliciously torchy “Sigh No More” (to music by Greg Pliska); Becky Ann Baker as the Abbess who figures prominently in the play’s denouement, Jonathan Hadary as the piteous father of Antiphlous; and Skipp Sudduth as a Godfather-like Duke.

(The Delacorte Theater in Central Park; through June 30. Tickets to The Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park are FREE and are distributed, two per person, at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park on the day of the show.)