Urbanite

The Master Builder 3 stars

Andrei Belgrader’s new production of Henrik Ibsen’s 1892 tragedy “The Master Builder,” which stars John Turturro and is now playing at Brooklyn Academy of Music, manages to make a difficult, highly symbolic, rarely staged play feel fresh, focused, sinister and unapologetically erotic.

Halvard Solness (Turturro), a middle-aged architect who fears he will soon...

Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 3 stars

Whereas many shows tend to lose some of their luster when transferred to a larger venue, “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812,” Dave Malloy’s festive and sexy electro-pop opera based on a small slice of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” plays better at Kazino than it did a few months ago at the more intimate Ars Nova.

Kazino is...

I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat with Sue Mengers 3 stars

Just imagine the excitement if Bette Midler came to Broadway in a big, splashy musical. What a shame she couldn’t be squeezed into the cast of “Priscilla Queen of the Desert,” which she helped produce two seasons ago.

Not counting a few limited-run concerts, Midler has not appeared in a Broadway play or musical since she was a replacement...

The Nance 2.5 stars

Nathan Lane is one of very few actors still around who is rightfully considered a genuine stage star (as opposed to a movie star moonlighting on Broadway in between other gigs).

His brilliant performance in “The Producers” in 2001 effectively re-energized the Great White Way for the new millennium and revived the then-moribund art form of musical comedy.

When...

Motown: The Musical 2 stars

Instead of having to endure perhaps a dozen different jukebox musicals based on various Motown icons in future years, “Motown: The Musical” allows us to get it all over with in one shot.

It’s an unwieldy and unfocused attempt to package dozens of hit songs from all the trailblazing Motown performers of the 1960s and 1970s into a single sugarcoated, sanitized...

Much Ado About Nothing 2 stars

After an extended wait, Off-Broadway's Theatre for a New Audience will finally move into a newly built Elizabethan-style theater in Downtown Brooklyn. This marks its final year at the Duke, a rentable space in Times Square.

To start the season, it is presenting Shakespeare's romantic comedy "Much Ado About Nothing," which has not received a major...