FeralCarol

See it if You want to see an actor (Skybell) who lives and embodies Tevye

Don't see it if Reading supertitles for 3 hours is too much, you don't want to be reminded of current events when you go to a show

See it if Over a decade later, and this show's still got it. Go when you need a powerful pick me up for your own destiny.

Don't see it if You don't like belting or cutesy songs

See it if you like Sherlock being brought back to life, you don't mind yet another Christmas Carol take

Don't see it if you're expecting something truly fuzzy/heartwarming -- it all felt a bit more distant than anything Christmas Carol take usually is

See it if you want to see a stunning, dizzying "friend like me" performance + a whole lotta 6-8 packs

Don't see it if you don't like shows where everything is rushed, you're expecting profundity

See it if you want to watch the heartaching fall of a deluded man

Don't see it if 3 hours of honestly pretty depressing stuff about capitalism and family dynamics is too much for you

See it if You're a fan of wordplay and minimalist staging with transcendent acting

Don't see it if you want a memorable melody, if distracted audience members talking and on their phone that ushers do nothing about really bother you

See it if You want James McAvoy to set your loins on fire

Don't see it if You want something where you can turn off your brain

Also Now *this* is how you use a bare stage to great effect, polar opposite of what Sam Gold's Macbeth tries and fails miserably to do. James McAvoy (and the entire cast) are enthralling, not the least because you really have to focus on the words they're laying down. We were entranced the whole show, even with its considerable length and BAM's ridiculously designed balcony seats.... Read more Read less

See it if You want to see Ruth Negga carry a show

Don't see it if You're not okay with Ruth Negga carrying a show

Also This was honestly incredibly disappointing. So many unnecessary things were added without any foundation of good acting or staging.... Read more Read less

See it if You love retellings of Greek myth, NOLA, Andre DeShields, or musicals that make you think about our world.

Don't see it if You're looking for something sparkly and trite, or get bored easily (this is almost all sung-through).

See it if You're a fan of his music or generally his genre and want some light politics

Don't see it if You know _nothing_ about any of his songs. I only recognized one, which was a fun time, and was mostly entertained, but got bored at others.

See it if You're a Shakespeare completist, you're interested in love in war, you want to see a different twist on the Trojan War than the Iliad.

Don't see it if You dislike Shakespeare, you have something against single gender casts, you don't like tumultuous love stories

Also It is so amazing and heartwarming and unique (still!) to see women allowed to be good, bad, dumb, cunning, and everything in between. They do their utmost to distinguish the multitude of Trojan and Greek characters, and most of the issues with the play lay with the original source material - more time is spent with the Grecians than the titular lovers, and it has a somewhat abrupt emotional ending. My one complaint is their decision to play percussion beneath ALL of the dialogue - Shakespeare's words can stand on their own! And it just makes it harder to hear in an already echoing space.

Otherwise, the casting was wonderfully spot on (I can't imagine these characters as anything but now), and it was an honor to see one of Shakespeare's lesser known plays brought to life so thoughtfully.... Read more Read less

See it if You want the network TV equivalent of a conflict painted in broad strokes that gets resolved mainly to satisfy the characters.

Don't see it if You want something nuanced, with depth, or forward-thinking. Parts of it were incredibly disappointingly dated in thought.

Also I was anticipating a fun, joyous celebration of growing up LGBTQ, but for a show about something so ostensibly progressive, this was full of stereotypes that were near offensive. Bullying (on a shockingly cruel level) is elided over as a misunderstanding, Christians simply need to be shown the hypocrisy of their ways through Bible verses, and the urban elite are full of themselves but still useful as banks. Everybody tries to empower Emma, a decidedly non-femme character, through her femininity, and when she finally finds her own way and voice, there isn't any acknowledgement of this.

For all of this though, I recognize this show wasn't for me - it was probably aimed more for middle school kids, or people who don't live these issues as much. It may have all been worth it for the little girl I overheard on the way out saying, "I liked the part when the main girl got back together with her girlfriend."... Read more Read less

See it if You want to see the emotional highs and lows of high school students writ large or you want a flashier, less artful Dear Evan Hansen

Don't see it if You don't like bright lights and loud noises, you don't like stories about alienation in high school

Also In a lot of ways, Be More Chill is a less artful Dear Evan Hansen. It covers much of the same things, just with a lot less depth and complexity, often mistaking MORE for better. It's surprisingly full of outdated gender stereotypes for such a modern show, and one particularly identifying moment of sexuality feels completely like unearned fan service.... Read more Read less

See it if You want something sweet and meditative, imaginative artistically but not really creative at all in the plotting.

Don't see it if Puppets creep you out in any way (there's a *particularly* creepy one), you want an imaginative story, you need dialogue

See it if You're a fan of WfG and want to see a beautiful stylized setting of it with its original accent/diction

Don't see it if You don't like plays that make you examine your existence of if you need frequent action/plot movement

Also Like other reviewers have mentioned, Act I and Act II are vastly different in energy and direction, and as a result, a good number of people around me left during the intermission. This is a much more physical version of WfG with younger actors, lending the text more poignancy and applicability. It is a bit slow and indulgent, particularly in Act I, but this fortunately all disappears in a much more brisk and engaging Act II. Pozzo is played as more prim, undercutting his power and sadism (a negative in my book), but Lucky remains the ever amazing physical part that it is. The set and lighting are both emotionally striking, and it's easy to see why it's been brought around the world.... Read more Read less

See it if You like comedic storytelling or one man shows

Don't see it if You don't like comedy about having kids

Also Let me start off with: I love Birbigs. I've been a fan of his work since Sleepwalk With Me, and I've seen his work all over the city, from the tiny comedy rooms to Carnegie Hall. My rating of this Broadway show is largely based on the fact that... I know he can do better. While The New One is undisputedly Birbigs at his finest in form, there is almost nothing that hasn't been covered before in his content. Yes, having a baby is hard, and it changes everything. Welcome to the club? While I usually delight in the plot twists and emotional ups and downs of his storytelling, I could see almost every emotional beat coming ahead of time, and that was disappointing. Is it still a great hilarious show? Absolutely. But it feels like it's been made anodyne for a Broadway audience.... Read more Read less

See it if You like musicals in their early stages and want to be brainlessly entertained

Don't see it if You want something polished or well thought out

Also I struggle with rating this one because anybody who can even write the bare bones of a musical should be celebrated -- but there were just a lot of baffling choices, including a manic screaming 100% of the time Jefferson (why?) and a neither comical nor explained choice to make Clark gay ("character development"?). The fact that it's poorly researched is in the very title, but it's a conceit I feel they could have done a LOT more with, rather than just mumbling some dates and making up Chief Running Joke. There was so much potential there to be more clever!

Some of the cast have great comedic timing , but it mostly felt like a lot of the lines were filler that never got replaced with real ones later. It's brainlessly entertaining, but just so.... Read more Read less

See it if You want to see likely the best staging of Henry VI to come around in ages, you want to see amazing strong women playing strong characters

Don't see it if You don't like Shakespeare, want mindless brain candy, or are bothered by simulated death and torture

Also Guys, the lighting, staging, and acting in this show are all phenomenal. Henry VI is a *hard* play to put on, and you almost never see it done this clearly, with a sprawling cast of characters with ever-shifting loyalties, or this elegantly, with its multitude of balletic battle scenes. Every single actor is extraordinarily talented, and every single one gets a chance to shine as they cover nearly 100 roles between the mere 16 of them. The production is striking, making much use of a few props that stand in for castle walls, thrones, heads, and swords, and the costuming is so inventive as it makes use of multiple textures and colors to imply status and roles.

I'm so honored I got to see this play before the NYT review hit. Walk, don't run to the box office!... Read more Read less

See it if You want to learn some of the basics of how fight choreography is staged, you want to try learning a cool pool noodle routine.

Don't see it if your mobility isn't great or you don't want to see how the magic happens.

Also This was definitely an experience where you got as much out of it as you put in -- I happened to pair up with the one other person actually in athletic clothes, and we definitely went at it harder in our duel than anybody else did. People of all ages (elementary school to grandma!) had fun.... Read more Read less

See it if you'd enjoy learning more about the historical context of the Titanic, you like one man shows, you enjoy an irreverent take on Heaven

Don't see it if you have zero interest in the Titanic, are easily offended by religious caricatures

Also One thing in particular I really appreciated about this show was that it does not assume the audience has a set body of knowledge. So many shows based on Shakespearean plays or historical occurrences lean their entire narrative and plot twists on the audience having read the Wikipedia article right before the show. Jimmy Titanic does a good job of introducing players, showing you why they care, and then showing you how this affected their individual lives. It's a tour de force of acting.... Read more Read less

See it if You like ukulele music, EAP and his stories, small casts

Don't see it if You want a lot of allusions, anything deep / edgy, you don't like mugging for the camera

See it if You want a hilarious yet poignant distillation of Macbeth.

Don't see it if You don't know the story of Macbeth, want a traditional theater experience, or don't like set pieces set to music.

Also This duo does an amazing job distilling the essence of Macbeth into 45 fast-paced minutes. Sure, all of the characters are items you might find at your local picnic, but it just highlights their skill in imbuing objects with personhood when you find yourself catching your breath at what Macbeth does to all of Macduff's pretty eggs, er, chickens. Particularly refreshing in a Fringe festival show is this script's succintness - nary a motion seems like it goes on for too long, and the musical cues help you switch contexts in what otherwise could be a bewildering change of scenes.... Read more Read less

See it if You want a dizzying Broadway spectacle where you feel like you're in the middle of the action no matter where you sit.

Don't see it if You want a coherent/comprehensible story, catchy songs, or strong source material.

See it if You grew up with Harry Potter and are a millenial. So many cultural jokes.

Don't see it if You need everything to make sense, you've never read or watched HP

See it if you like one-man shows that tie character development to the arc of pop culture

Don't see it if you find impressions annoying, don't know anything about Batman, dislike pop culture

See it if You want to be drawn into an intense 90 minutes of storytelling, you like the original source story and want to hear it fleshed out.

Don't see it if you're bothered by swearing or descriptions of dark, near-death situations. I have a high tolerance found this intense.

See it if You want a pleasant evening and enjoy learning more about Gorey and seeing a slight evolution of his self.

Don't see it if You don't know anything about Gorey, or you're looking for actual dark secrets. Nothing here is a revelation.

Also This was a perfectly pleasant way to pass 75 minutes, with some laugh out loud moments and some trenchant turns, but it was nothing rave-worthy. "Gorey" utilizes the 3 stages of the character much more interactively than "Fun Home" and introduces a bit of media that's sweet and entertaining, if nothing else. Worth it if you enjoy Gorey and just want to learn more about him, but again, nothing in here is a secret.... Read more Read less

See it if if you like true NYC theatre with audience participation and goofy plot points

Don't see it if You're looking for a polished Broadway experience, you expect an actual plot, you stay firmly behind the fourth wall

See it if You want to see a show that walks a perfect life between humor and the hard tragedies of life with mental illness.

Don't see it if You don't want to hear about the darker side of life or get triggered by talks about mental illness

See it if You can lay aside any expectations of a polished show and appreciate some few impressive moments of dance among a lot of filler.

Don't see it if You want a coherent plot, dialogue.

Also Devdas, at its core, ran on for way too long (90 minutes!) with repetitive scenes and not much cohesion or coherency. Some of the dancers are legitimately skilled, and get some moments to shine, but there were also many ridiculously short dance scenes that just took up time. I would have liked to see Chokher Bali, but we had to leave after sitting through Devdas.... Read more Read less

See it if You want to explore a cool gimmick while listening to what amounts to an audio book -- and if you get cheap rush tickets.

Don't see it if You're expecting a full use of the binaural medium.

See it if you've ever worked in a corporation or start-up and love to see individuals skewered

Don't see it if you're looking for a big flashy production

See it if you like quick, snappy, hilarious dialogue; a bit of pathos in your story; ping pong!

Don't see it if You're hard of hearing, as the dialogue goes quick and sometimes unintelligible due to the set up; you want a slower play.

See it if you like a cappella and tangential explorations of what it means to be "other"

Don't see it if you want a deeper exploration of identity, you don't like plot expressed in song

See it if You don't mind thought-provoking plays reminiscent of "Waiting for Godot" and "No Exit" that ask you to explore the human experience.

Don't see it if You want a traditional story arc play.

See it if You like plays in the theme of "The Notebook" with worse dialogue and character development.

Don't see it if You were expecting anything mature, earned, or well-written. You know anybody with cancer.

See it if You're open to new sensory experiences, like Macbeth, want an interesting experience

Don't see it if you get scared or overwhelmed by sensory input easily, if you know nothing about Macbeth

See it if You like a millenial take on Waiting for Godot that goes by faster than you think it will.

Don't see it if You need A/C. You hate plays where 2 people just talk to each other.