★★★☆☆ Unpacking complicated family history, but with unengaging characters and performances
Off-Broadway
Mack & Mabel: A Musical Heartbreaker in More Ways Than One
★★★★☆ Jerry Herman’s musical about Hollywood legends is an imperfect charmer
Mack & Mabel: This One’s for Jerry
★★★★☆ Brushed off and spiffed up, the cult favorite 1974 musical finally gets the Encores! treatment
Blues for an Alabama Sky: 1930s Harlem Dreaming
★★★★☆ Pearl Cleage looks at five figures running for their natural lives
Blues for an Alabama Sky: A Hard-Boiled Canary Desires a Better Roost
★★★☆☆ Pearl Cleage’s 1995 drama about 1930 Harlem life receives its overdue New York premiere
Anatomy of a Suicide: Three Generations, Weighing on Each Other
★★☆☆☆ An award-winning play about women, trauma, and legacy, collapsing in on itself
Anatomy of a Suicide: Mothers and Daughters, in Agonizing Triplicate
★★★☆☆ Playwright Alice Birch looks at one of our closest, most fraught relationships, with a cast led by a haunting Carla Gugino
Dracula/Frankenstein: Stoker, Shelley Classics on Lowered Stakes
★★☆☆☆ Adaptations by Kate Hamill and Tristan Bernays are playing in rep, directed by Sarna Lapine and Timothy Douglas
Dracula/Frankenstein: Smart New Stagings of Gothic Literature
★★★★☆ Classic Stage delivers very different but very smart new versions of the classic horror stories, in rep
The Sabbath Girl: A Cute but Clichéd Cross-Cultural Rom-Com
★★★☆☆ Cary Gitter’s comedy centers on an Italian-American woman and an Orthodox Jewish knish maker in New York City