REVIEW: The Humans, Roundabout at Laura Pels Theatre ✭✭✭

The Humans. Roundabout Theatre Company at the Laura Pels Theatre

There are two ways in which Karam’s work steps up to the mark: the dialogue is believable and genuine, splendidly touching in places; the narrative is uncompromising, as families so often are. There are no pat solutions or happy endings here – just a slice of suburban transitional life. This has the result that if the play is to achieve any momentum or purpose, it is the cast which must embellish the material with remarkable, penetrating and utterly believable performances. Happily, the cast with which Mantello animates Karam’s work is, without exception, first rate.

REVIEW: On The Twentieth Century, American Airlines Theatre ✭✭✭✭✭

Kristen Chenoweth stars in On The Twentieth Century at the American Airlines Theatre

Whatever your thoughts about Chenoweth, her performance in this musical is that one-of-a-kind, flat-out unbelievably extraordinary star turns that leaves you breathless and stunned by the power, ferocity and magnetism of the delivery, both vocal and physical, of the performance, desperate to immediately see her do it all over again and certain, quite quite certain, that, no matter how long you live, you will never see anyone play that role like that again.

REVIEW: Into The Woods, Roundabout At Laura Pels Theatre ✭✭✭✭

Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine at the Roundabout Theare Company

Derek McLane provides a set which looks like the shattered innards of a grand piano. The proscenium is framed by bits of piano, and the back wall is almost entirely taken up by a tangle of piano wires – they stand in for the Woods in some ways. But the overall result is that the audience is constantly reminded that they are not watching a musical; they are inside one.