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:
• Angels in America (two-part drama, R, many shows sold out last week, alternating in repertory through July 1, reviewed here)
• The Band’s Visit (musical, PG-13, most shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Dear Evan Hansen (musical, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Lobby Hero (drama, PG-13, most shows sold out last week, closes May 13, reviewed here)
• Three Tall Women (drama, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, closes June 24, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Miss You Like Hell (musical, PG-13, closes May 13, reviewed here)
• Symphonie Fantastique (abstract underwater puppet show, G, closes June 17, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:
• Pygmalion (comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)

“Finally leadership, in any democracy, is a matter of character—a fact few intellectuals find palatable.”

Clive James, Fame in the 20th Century

Robert Preston sings “I Died for a Living” on An Evening With Carol Burnett, originally telecast by CBS on February 24, 1963. This song, by Burnett’s writers, refers to Preston’s pre-Music Man career in Hollywood as a supporting actor who frequently played villains:

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

“The doctrine of human equality reposes upon this: That there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid. That there is no big man who has not felt small. Some men never feel small; but these are the few men who are.”

G.K. Chesterton, A Miscellany of Men

From 2008:

I wouldn’t dream of denying that precious few newspapers (mine fortunately excepted) are doing their duty, or anything like it, to high culture in America and the world. Which is why it strikes me as faintly hypocritical that they should continue to devote one day out of the year to praising a playwright, a composer, and a half-dozen writers—and Bob Dylan, who needs a Pulitzer Prize a lot less than the Pulitzer Prizes need Bob Dylan….

Read the whole thing here.

“I have read your story ‘On the Road.’ If I were the editor of an illustrated magazine, I should publish the story with great pleasure; but here is my advice as a reader: when you depict sad or unlucky people, and want to touch the reader’s heart, try to be colder—it gives their grief as it were a background, against which it stands out in greater relief. As it is, your heroes weep and you sigh. Yes, you must be cold.”

Anton Chekhov, letter to Lidya Alexyevna Avilov, March 19, 1892 (trans. Constance Garnett)

Johnny Hodges plays Billy Strayhorn’s “Passion Flower” with Duke Ellington’s band in Copenhagen in 1967:

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

“Rule of thumb: Actors are people who know how to pretend to be someone else. Comedians are people who know how to pretend to be themselves.”

Merrill Markoe (Twitter, March 6, 2018)

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review Broadway revivals of Carousel and Children of a Lesser God. Here’s an excerpt.

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Jack O’Brien is very smart, but his Broadway revival of “Carousel” is uneven, enough so that those who know the show may find it a disappointment—though they’ll certainly be staggered by the singing. Jessie Mueller, Joshua Henry and Lindsay Mendez, who play Julie, Billy, and Carrie, are all such resplendently fine vocalists that they need make no apologies for sharing a stage with Renée Fleming, who plays Nettie Fowler and so gets to sing “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” Voice for voice, I’ve never heard a better-sung revival of a golden-age musical.

So what’s wrong? Mr. O’Brien’s “Carousel” feels slick, like an old-master painting that has been garishly over-restored. Not only are Santo Loquasto’s elaborate sets too pretty—and, in the case of the second-act vision of heaven, too campy—but Mr. O’Brien has also seen fit to have the whole show rechoreographed by Justin Peck of New York City Ballet. It’s not merely that the original dances, by Agnes de Mille, are a time-honored part of “Carousel”: They’re as masterly as the ones made by Jerome Robbins for “West Side Story,” and shouldn’t be replaced unless the new ones are decisive improvements. Not so Mr. Peck’s choreography, most of which is no more than fluent, while his one striking contribution, a vigorous all-male dance in the style of Michael Kidd’s work on “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” is less appropriately characterful than de Mille’s hornpipe….

Mark Medoff’s “Children of a Lesser God,” in which a deaf woman and her speech therapist meet cute, get married and discover that he Just Doesn’t Understand Her, was a huge hit on Broadway in 1979 and an even bigger one when it was filmed seven years later. But unlike Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” a problem play that has remained compelling long after the issues it portrays have evolved almost beyond recognition, “Children” is too dramatically creaky to survive its own transformation into a period piece. Today we want to see inside the deaf culture at whose existence Mr. Medoff hints, instead of merely looking at it through a window. To be sure, it is always instructive to watch a well-meaning liberal being flagellated by the objects of his thoughtless condescension, as happens to the therapist in “Children,” but the only other thing the play now has to offer is a chance for a virtuoso deaf actor to strut her stuff.

That’s the main point of Kenny Leon’s new Broadway revival, which stars Lauren Ridloff, who had never acted professionally prior to starring last summer in the Berkshire Theater Group production of “Children.” Her performance is stupendously bold and expressive….

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To read my review of Carousel, go here.

To read my review of Children of a Lesser God, go here.

An archival silent film of the second-act ballet sequence from Carousel, 1945 Broadway production, including Bambi Linn, Annabelle Lyon, and Robert Pagent, synchronized to a recording of the orchestral score:

The trailer for the Broadway revival of Children of a Lesser God: