All Nighter review

Scott, Gallagher and Lester in All Nighter. (Evan Zimmerman)

With their lives as college students about to come to an end, four friends and roommates gather on their campus of their Pennsylvania liberal arts college in 2014 for one last cram session — and it's a doozy in All Nighter, a promising new work by Natalie Margolin that dives into the complicated dynamics of female friendship. 

It's a credit to Margolin — as well as to director Jaki Bradley and her cast — that the young women can't be easily described with just an adjective or two. Darcie (understudy Tessa Albertson at the performance I saw), with a teacher job lined up, seems to be the one with her life most in order. Nervous drama student Lizzy (Isa Briones) needs Adderall to get her through the wee hours. More self-assured Jacqueline (Kathryn Gallagher), who is dating a female freshman. comes across as the de facto leader of the group. Does she know that rich girl Tessa (Alyah Chanelle Scott) has done something that may compromise her trust?

Although the plot of All Nighter is slow to unfold, it gives Margolin a chance to lay the groundwork for the revelations that come later. Tessa's credit card goes missing, two of Lizzy's pills have disappeared. For years the gals have been blaming incidents like these on the house ghost, but reality is more mundane.

The repeated arrivals of a fifth character, Julia Lester's excessive, histrionic Wilma, set in motion the unraveling of all the falsehoods and omissions the women have been living with. Lester's character is designed to be a scene-stealer, but her performance is more over-the-top than necessary. 

The strength and, dare I say, heart of All Nighter lies in its unsparing look at the dynamics between four young women who thought they were the best of friends realizing how little they actually know about each other.

Boop! and Smash reviews

Jasmine Amy Rogers in Boop! (MatthewMurphy and Evan Zimmerman©)

Canadian scribe Bob Martin seems an unlikely candidate to have two musicals premiering on Broadway in the same month. Then again, his penchant for gently quirky, character-based comedy looks like something the Great White Way could use right now. But neither Boop! The Musical nor Smash seems destined for a long Broadway run, in part because the stories they tell aren't very enticing.

Martin, who shared a Tony Award with Don McKellar for the book of The Drowsy Chaperone in 2006, has the unenviable task of trying to conjure up a coherent story for sexy cartoon character Betty Boop. Her animated shorts were a hit with Depression-era moviegoers, and today she's apparently recognized as a feminist icon by some, but this Broadway musical isn't the best venture with which to revive her.  

That's not to take anything away from Jasmine Amy Rogers, who delivers a dynamic performance as Betty, or 17-year-old Angelica Hale as a present-day teenage girl obsessed with the character who meets her idol at New York Comic Con. Her powerful voice could stop many a show.

But the actresses are sidelined by sketchy material that never fully colors in its characters. Restless in her black-and-white cartoon world, Betty leaves it behind to not only time-travel (via her grandfather's contraption) but change dimensions too. As she learns what it is to be human, she strives to make the world a better place by inspiring the people around her. 

The highlight is easily the second-act opening number, "Where Is Betty?" which features the ensemble dressed half in black-and-white attire and half in full color, singing and dancing as they tread back and forth between Betty's present and her cartoon past. Otherwise, it's hard to get too wrapped up in Boop! because even though these are three-dimensional characters, they come across as cartoons. Jerry Mitchell's direction, David Foster's music and Susan Birkenhead's lyrics get the job done but with little excitement.

Megan Kane, Ashmanskas, Hurder, Nielsen, Rodriguez and Behlmann in Smash (Matthew Murphy)

Smash, at least, has a coherent story and a better score. But it faces director Susan Stroman's production faces the same problem as the NBC TV series on which it's based: an unsatisfying, overwrought plot relieved by a splendid array of musical numbers as cast and creatives struggle to bring a show about Marilyn Monroe to Broadway.

They have a terrific, triple-threat leading lady in Robyn Hurder, who plays Ivy Lynn, a Broadway star rehearsing to play Marilyn Monroe in a new musical called Bombshell. All seems to be going well until she reads a book about the tragic movie star and suddenly turns into a Method actor to the extreme, abetted by acting coach Susan Proctor (Kristine Nielsen). 

Soon, Ivy is demanding that everyone refer to her as Marilyn and becoming an all-around difficult diva. She wants the show rewritten, much to the dismay of the director, Nigel (Brooks Ashmanskas), and creators, married couple Jerry and Tracy (John Behlmann and Krysta Rodriguez), who hoped to tell a happy, upbeat story about Marilyn's life. Why they thought it would be possible to do that for a woman who died by suicide at age 36 isn't explained?

After setting up Ivy as the main character, the show takes a detour, and things start to fall apart both for Bombshell and Smash. Producer Anita (Jacqueline B. Arnold), attuned to the social media buzz, contemplates replacing her with candidates such as understudy Karen (Caroline Bowman) or assistant director Chloe (Bella Coppola). Is social media really that powerful? 

The best parts of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman's score, much of it songs originally written for the TV series, are numbers from the show-within-the-show, including "Let Me Be Your Star" and "Let's Be Bad," which was already repurposed for their Some Like It Hot musical. 

Book writers Martin and Rick Elice have concocted a story with some hardy laughs but too many partially developed characters. Writing about issues like whether an actress who does not have Marilyn's svelte body should have a shot at playing her isn't a substitute for creating well-crafted people audiences are interested in. 

John Proctor Is the Villain review

Scott, Kuntz, Strazza, Yoo, Ebert and Griggs in John Proctor Is the Villain. (Julieta Cervantes)

There's nothing subtle about the title of Kimberly Belflower's new play. John Proctor Is the Villain takes a revisionist look at The Crucible as a high-school honors class dissects the revered Arthur Miller play from a feminist perspective. Its themes intelligently and insightfully reflect the lives of the teenage girls studying the classic, and their stories come vibrantly alive in Danya Taymor's excellent production. If only Belflower were as adept at developing her male characters as she is her females. 

Popular teacher Carter Smith (Tony winner Gabriel Ebert) leads an honors English class at a high school "in a one-stoplight town" in Georgia in 2018. Their study of Miller's classic about the Salem Witch Trials becomes the impetus for self-discovery for the female students, who begin to see parallels between the struggles of teenage girls in 17th century Massachusetts and their own plights where men are concerned. 

Ivy (Maggie Kuntz) has a father whose secretary has accused him of inappropriate behavior. Nell (Morgan Scott) forges a connection with dumb jock Mason (Nihar Duvvuri). Beth (Fina Strazza) may not realize her connection with Mr. Smith has crossed a line. Raelynn (Amalia Yoo) has a controlling ex-boyfriend, Lee (Hagan Oliveras), who messed around with one of their classmates, Shelby (Stranger Things' Sadie Sink), who has been absent from school for some time. 

When she returns — in dramatic fashion — the girls find solidarity in their shared experiences, both with each other and what they imagine their peers might have gone through in Colonial days, including loss of parents and sexual exploitation by men. Belflower, who hails from a small town in Georgia, excels at creating fully fleshed-out young Southern women, in both the students and a young guidance counselor played by Molly Griggs. 

Her three male characters end up falling into caricature, two predators and a himbo. Ebert, always a welcome stage presence, ably handles the shift in his character, although Smith lacks the depth of Miller's John Proctor. But how much richer the play could have been if the men were as layered as the women.

Maybe it was Belflower's intent to subject her male characters to the kind of paper-thin treatment female characters have too often received at the hands of male playwrights, but it lessens the show's heft. Fortunately, the work of Taymor and her excellent young cast is enough to compensate, and make John Proctor Is the Villain one of the more pleasant surprises of the Broadway season.