Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:
• The Color Purple (musical, PG-13, reviewed here)
• Dear Evan Hansen (musical, PG-13, virtually all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• The Encounter (one-man immersive drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 8, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, closes Jan. 1, most shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• On Your Feet! (jukebox musical, G, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)
• Finian’s Rainbow (small-scale musical revival, G, closes Jan. 29, reviewed here)
• Sweet Charity (small-scale musical revival, PG-13, closes Jan. 8, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:
• Love, Love, Love (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Dec. 18, reviewed here)
• Sweat (drama, PG-13, closes Dec. 18, reviewed here)

“First cameras turn against you, then mirrors.”

Whit Stillman (posted on Twitter, October 12, 2016)

Son House introduces and sings “Death Letter Blues” in 1968:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”

Winston Churchill, The Second World War: The Gathering Storm

As a result of the recent redesign of The Wall Street Journal, my drama reviews will now appear throughout the week rather than on Fridays only. In today’s paper I cover the Broadway transfer of Dear Evan Hansen. Here’s an excerpt.

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At a time when the musical is showing clear signs of creative senility, it’s heartening to report that “Dear Evan Hansen,” a small-scale show that has transferred to Broadway after successful runs at Washington’s Arena Stage and New York’s Second Stage, is as good as its buzz. It’s smartly crafted, emotionally open-hearted and ideally cast. What’s more, it’s pitched to and has been embraced by millennials, a tradition-resistant cohort whose members have hitherto steered clear of most Broadway musicals—yet its appeal is universal. Whatever your age, you’ll watch “Dear Evan Hansen” with the shock of recognition, and be touched by the honesty with which it portrays the smothering sensation of being an adolescent misfit, an awkward loser trapped in an indifferent world of self-assured winners….

“Dear Evan Hansen” is a dead-serious comedy about teenage suicide that is structured like a farce. The title character (played with astonishing conviction and absolute believability by Ben Platt) is an incapacitatingly shy nerd who writes a self-revealing letter that gets into the wrong hands, touching off a train of coincidence fueled by the social media that causes him to become…well, popular. But Evan’s popularity is based on a well-meaning lie, one that he ultimately finds impossible to keep on telling—at which point the roof falls in.

Up to a point, the situation that propels “Dear Evan Hansen” is played for laughs, and gets them. But the overall tone is entirely earnest, and while the comedy (which includes a terrific first-act ensemble number, “Sincerely, Me”) leavens this earnestness, it doesn’t dilute it. In fact, the second act, in which we get a closer look at the desperately unhappy family lives of the principal characters, is joltingly dark. Fortunately, the singer-songwritery score, by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, has a light, fresh texture that keeps lugubriousness at bay…

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

Ben Platt and Laura Dreyfuss perform “Waving Through a Window,” a song from Dear Evan Hansen, on Late Night with Seth Meyers:

From 2003:

I’m glad to be a self-made man, and I also find it surprisingly useful to have been born into a small-town family. For one thing, the experience of growing up in southeast Missouri made me a cultural realist. (I learned early on that there’s no such thing as a really famous writer.) It has also given me an understanding of Red America not shared by many New Yorkers of my acquaintance. I’ve changed a lot since I left town in 1974, but part of me remains deeply rooted in the place where I grew up. I’m like a walking, talking focus group: I almost always know what will fly in southeast Missouri, and what will flop….

Read the whole thing here.

“Beauty frightens and offends the nihilist. It’s a reproach to his sense of unbounded self-importance. Beauty cannot be ignored, so it must be vandalized.”

Patrick Kurp, “‘Our Lives Are Judged’” (Anecdotal Evidence, October 10, 2016)

Sid Caesar is interviewed by Edward R. Murrow on Person to Person. This episode was originally telecast by CBS on October 1, 1954:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)