Off-Broadway Shows
ENGLISH CHANNEL: Robert Brustein blends witty erudition and lowbrow humor in this comedy about a critical juncture in the career of Shakespeare. Abingdon Theater, 312 West 36th Street.
ENTER LAUGHING: Why did this artfully silly musical about a young man who wants to be an actor flop on Broadway in 1976? In the York Theater Company’s resurrection, it’s flat-out hilarious. Much of the credit goes to Josh Grisetti, playing the young man in question; his comic timing is superb, and the supporting cast matches him perfectly. Joseph Stein’s book and Stan Daniels’s songs have nothing on their minds but laughs, and they get them. York Theater Company, at St. Peter’s Church, 619 Lexington Avenue, at 54th Street.
THE FANTASTICKS: A revival …well, more like a resuscitation… of the Little Musical That Wouldn’t Die. Snapple Theater Center, 210 West 50th Street.
FELA!: The beat goes on, insistently and persuasively, in this pulse-racing musical about the Nigerian activist and Afrobeat king Fela Anikulapo Kuti, directed and choreographed by Bill T. Jones. In giving physical life to Mr. Kuti’s songs of political rage, sorrow and satire, this production offers thrilling music and its social context in one heady breath. 37 Arts, 450 West 37th Street.
THE FIRST BREEZE OF SUMMER: An appealingly acted revival of Leslie Lee’s ambitious, sprawling domestic drama from 1975 about an African-American family. This first entry in the Signature Theater Company’s season devoted to the Negro Ensemble Company, directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, features Leslie Uggams in a subtle, contradiction-embracing performance as a matriarch hostage to memory. Peter Norton Space, 555 West 42nd Street, Clinton.
FUERZABRUTA: A sensory bath aimed at club-going college kids in search of cultural diversion. Thumping techno music, smoke and a standing throng surround you as you watch a curious collection of semi-spectacular technical feats. Daryl Roth Theater, 20 Union Square East, at 15th Street.
THE GLASS CAGE: A smooth and polished staging with a top-notch cast keep J. B. Priestley’s none-too-subtle homily against hypocrisy among holier-than-thou Canadian Puritans at the turn of the 20th century from slipping into soap opera melodrama. Mint Theater, 311 West 43rd Street, Clinton.
JOHNNY ON A SPOT: The characters are too cardboard and the humor too mild for this forgotten 1942 comedy to have any contemporary resonance, even though it involves venality during an election. So the Peccadillo Theater Company’s production is mostly interesting as a museum piece, and as a chance to see a solo work by Charles MacArthur, who wrote “The Front Page” and other hits with Ben Hecht. Theater at St. Clement’s, 423 West 46th Street, Clinton.
LADY: Craig Wright’s enormously moving drama about three friends on a hunting trip weighs in wisely on the nature of change, distance and truth. The characters include a pro-Bush, pro-Cheney, pro-war politician and a loving dog that just wants to be a good girl. One of them won’t survive the day. Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, 224 Waverly Place, Greenwich Village.
THE MARVELOUS WONDERETTES: When the scheduled singers at a 1958 senior prom cancel, the title characters of this effervescent jukebox musical step in, and we’re lucky that they do. Each has her tribulations, and each is sharply drawn. The quartet sings hits of the era — all from a female perspective — and in the second act they return at their 10-year reunion, weathered and wiser. This production enjoyed a long run in Los Angeles, and with good reason. For a certain generation, and all fanciers of the girl-group sound, “The Marvelous Wonderettes” is an utter charm bomb. Westside Theater, 407 West 43rd Street, Clinton.
TABOOS: Carl Djerassi, an inventor of the birth control pill, follows the consequences of reproductive technology to extremes in this comic drama, in which a lesbian couple and a conservative Christian couple find themselves in an egg-swapping, sperm-donating tangle that tests everyone’s boundaries. The Christian characters (especially the woman) are close to caricatures, and things get a bit didactic at times, but the premise is intriguing and the acting uniformly fine. SoHo Playhouse, 15 Van Dam Street, South Village.
THREE CHANGES: Nicky Silver’s wan and sinister new play feels as if it had been assembled from a back catalog of absurdist plays from four decades ago. Wilson Milam directs a cast that includes Maura Tierney and Dylan McDermott as a self-deluding couple under siege from a creepy long-lost brother (Scott Cohen). Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street.
WHAT’S THAT SMELL: THE MUSIC OF JACOB STERLING: David Pittu portrays a luckless, talentless songwriter in this ingenious spoof of showbiz also-rans. Jacob fancies himself a Stephen Sondheim manqué, but his hilariously bad compositions tell another story. Peter Parnell is also a treat as the host of a cable television show leading Jacob down memory lane. The super bad show tunes feature Mr. Pittu’s lyrics (he also wrote the book) and music by Randy Redd. Atlantic Theater Company Stage 2, 330 West 16th Street, Chelsea.
Off Off Broadway Shows
ABSINTHE: For all its lip service to decadence, this naughty circus-meets-burlesque show in the Spiegeltent succeeds best at its most innocent. The feats of physical daring-do have the elemental magic of “Look what I can do!” As for the rest, be careful. Audience members can be manhandled, suggestively sat on, lewdly sung to or worse. Spiegelworld NYC 2008, Pier 17, South Street Seaport, Fulton and South Streets, Lower Manhattan.
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