New York Notebook

Dominique Morrisseau's latest tragicomedy sweeps in like an invigorating gust of spice-scented tropical wind. She has a born dramatist's gift for conveying weighty matters – here, the punishing turmoil that persists in post-colonial, post-earthquake Haiti – within a spirited drama packed with humor.

The cast assembled and directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene could not be more winning. Kelly McCreary holds the center steady as Simone, a U.S.-educated business exec on temporary leave while she seeks a do-gooder cause in which she might actually do some good.

Long separated from her Haitian roots, Simone alights in the home/atelier of her elder cousin Gigi, an uptight, deadly-chic modiste (spot-on costumes and Riviera-aspirational stock by Haydee Zelideth). Gigi has an unpaid handyman on duty around the clock: Pita (Jude Tibeau), her grown-and-then-some one-time ward turned virtual indentured servant.

Personalities immediately clash. We're primed to find Simone villainously over-controlling, but in the course of two acts Morrisseau manages to humanize her. Pita, for his part, may initially seem submissive. Encouraged by Gigi's interest, however, he's soon wielding the wit of a long-oppressed underling and trying on some true colors.

Even the intractable poverty in which Port-au-Prince seems entrenched has, in this depiction, begun to show gradual signs of change.

Simone thinks she may have found the ideal test case in the form of a struggling garment worker, Lovelie (Fedna Jacquet, memorable from Ain't No Mo). Lovelie spends her days designing and hand-sewing luxury throw pillows in a dimly lit, cramped cubicle (kudos to scenic designer Jason Sherwood for the revolving set, which contrasts Simone's chic little shop with rusting walls of corrugated tin).

Lovelie is a new recruit in a workers' cooperative intended to provide alternate employment for former sex workers. In exchange or her labors, she gets to retain a small percentage of the net – provided that she can get a middleman to market her handiwork.

Some demand favors in return. Her semi-sympathetic overseer (Andy Lucien) may not choose to partake, but he turns a blind eye. Recalling his own childhood sleeping "on the cold hard concrete floors of someone else's home." he insists that there's no escaping the economic food chain: "Exploitation is nécessaire." Lovelie and her co-workers may have managed to come in from the streets, but it's a case of plus ça change.

Simultaneously earnest and wry, Simone comes across plenty of situations that spark her outrage, and each abreaction brings on a flourish of first-world guilt. Ultimately, against all odds, she finds an ally in a cousin whose designer-knockoff pumps are firmly planted in an oppositional worldview. There are lessons to be learned here, but they go down easy and are thus more likely to stick.

Sunset Blvd.

Broadway

Through July 6, 2025

 
Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond. Photo: Mark Brenner

Finally, an Andrew Lloyd Webber revival that even a hater can love! It's the voices — although in director Jamie Lloyd's hyper-stylized rendition, the faces (not to mention bodies) are looking awfully good as well.

The show opens with a tasteful interpretive dance choreographed by Fabian Aloise and sinuously performed by Hannah Yun Chamberlain as Young Norma. "Old" Norma Desmond (Nicole Scherzinger, famed for having fronted the Pussycat Dolls in the Aughts) is not exactly over the hill. At 46, the power-soprano looks lithe as a panther, all the more so as minimally clad in a skimpy black-satin slip (costumes by Soutra Gilmour, who also designed the barely-there all-black set). Playful, impishly distanced, Scherzinger delivers like the diva she is, and near-constant close-ups serve to pull us into the vortex that is Norma's vulnerable narcissism.

Projected against the stage's back wall, tracking videos (designed and executed onsite by Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom) speed the action along, while providing democratic access. Cleverly countering the natural resentment of onlookers consigned to the cheap seats, Lloyd and his team have amplified the stage space by means of a magnifying glass, while rendering it in period-appropriate black-and-white with dramatic, angular shadowing (think M). We get faces all right — often over 20 feet tall – as the hand-held cameras hover within spitting distance.

This propinquity might prove annoying were the three principals not such superb singers. Sound designer Adam Fisher seems to have amped up the Auto-Tune (or whatever the tech kids are calling it these days), but the voices he has to work with are impressive to start. It's impossible to begrudge the pre-select audience's automatic standing O after Scherzinger's sustained closing note in the cri de coeur "One Look": she earns it.

Playing the semi-consensual gigolo Joe Gillis (William Holden's role), the young Tom Francis – only 24! – manages to convey a lot of early-onset baggage. He's got that Robert Mitchum-y bruised look about the eyes, hinting at past trauma and pending payback; a physique seemingly made for exploitation; and vocal expressivity in spades.

Perhaps the most impressive singer of all in this production – though his character tends to lurk in the shadows – is David Thaxton as Norma's devoted guardian Max Von Mayerling. Thaxton's voice is of a timber so rich, so well trained and resonant, I wouldn't be surprised to spot him onstage at the Met.

This is a show you'll want to see — for the pure pleasure of it, and for the purpose of kibbitzing. The experience as a whole is so engaging, it's easy to yield to its shameless over-the-top-ness.

The Counter

Roundabout Theatre Company

*****

Through 11/17

Crack of dawn, nondescript coffee shop in the middle of nowhere – which is to say, upstate New York in the dead of winter (the windows are frosted over). The sole server, Katie (Susannah Flood), is pouring a cup for her first customer, a regular. That's Paul, played by Anthony Edwards, all but unrecognizable behind a bushy beard.

The two chat desultorily and engage in a bit of flirty badinage. He's not hitting on her, but there's some kind of bond, a tensile thread. He clearly feels it, even if she appears to be emotionally elsewhere. As Katie goes about her tasks, Flood's body language may appear loose, unconnected, but her eyes give onto a vast realm of pain.

Meghan Kennedy's script is a wonder of understatement, before and after it packs a few surprising wallops. The anodyne opening set-up begs the question: Who are these people, deep down, and what's their damage? Kennedy has taken on a dramatic challenge – especially timely now – which few playwrights would dare to attempt: how to depict profound, debilitating loneliness.

As designed by Walt Spangler in shades of defeated turquoise and chrome, this grim wedge of an eatery is a terminus, not a waystation, and a pretty poor excuse for a "third place." There's little succor to be found here. Even Katie confesses that she brings her own lunch ("a Lean Cuisine"). But Paul is a devotee – of hers, if not of the place – and he has a big ask. He builds up to it by questioning Katie as to why she has chosen to dead-end here, in what he labels a "give-up life."

Then it's quid pro quo of the best sort: they nudge each other into small, incremental steps to disrupt their respective self-protective routines. Humor, lurking all along, has room to grow; backstories unfurl and loosen their grip. Surfacing amid the gradual thaw, the town physician (Amy Warren) turns up just long enough to radiate warmth and suggest succor waiting just out of reach.

The Counter is a profoundly humanistic work, and a balm for the kind of stasis that can come for us all at some point. It points the way to a "give more" life.

Once upon a Mattress

Hudson Theatre

Through 11/30

In considering the genesis of Once Upon a Mattress, it helps to recall its era: in 1959, it was au courant to blame any and all dysfunction on an overcontrolling "refrigerator mother."

As Queen Aggravain (was there ever a more perfect character name?), Ana Gastayer conveys all the icy glamour of a control freak, plus a soupcon of filial lust – cue an audience-wide "eww."

Even dim Prince Dauntless (Michael Urie) senses something askew. His battle to emerge from under his mother's fiercely protective wing is at the core of the story, even if he's afforded very little opportunity to sing. Or even talk, for that matter. Director Lear deBessonet, in reprising Citi Center's summertime hit, gives Dauntless a "bit": a puzzling inability to mount or descend stairs. It's a lapniappe for the many little kids in the audience, who may not grasp the diamantine wit of the work's originators (book by Jay Thompson, Marshall Barer, Dean Fuller, music by Mary Rogers).

The songs (of which a few too many are included here) may be sacrosanct, but not so the dialogue, which prolific TV writer Amy Sherman Palladino, as adaptor, has burnished brilliantly.

Yes, In considering the genesis of Once Upon a Mattress, it helps to consider its era: in 1959, it was au courant to blame any and all dysfunction on an overcontrolling "refrigerator mother."

As Queen Aggravain (was there ever a more perfect character name?), Ana Gastayer conveys all the icy glamour of a control freak, plus a soupcon of filial lust – cue an audience-wide "eww."

Even dim Prince Dauntless (Michael Urie) senses something askew. His battle to emerge from under his mother's fiercely protective wing is at the core of the story, even if he's afforded very little opportunity to sing. Or even talk, for that matter. Director Lear deBessonet, in reprising Citi Center's summertime hit, gives Dauntless a "bit": a puzzling inability to mount or descend stairs. It's a lapniappe for the many little kids in the audience, who may not grasp the diamantine wit of the work's originators (book by Jay Thompson, Marshall Barer, Dean Fuller, music by Mary Rogers).

The songs (of which a few too many are included here) may be sacrosanct, but not so the dialogue, which prolific TV writer Amy Sherman Palladino, as adaptor, has burnished brilliantly.

Yes, Sutton Foster is a goofy genius as swamp-bred Princess Winnifred (would you expect anything less?), but Palladino has given the character a bit more depth. This Fred is an empath as well as a athletic phenom: before mounting the twenty mattresses that will test her mettle, she finds time to commiserate with Lady Larkin (Nikki Renee Daniel, of golden voice) after a failed attempt to flee the kingdom. So luscious and committed are the scenes of Larkin contemplating parenthood with her vain, dim beloved, Sir Harris (Will Chase), they threaten to steal the show.

It does run overly long, packing in several extraneous scenes. As the Jester (here a buttoned-down majordomo who never gets to jest), Daniel Breaker – a superb singer – is accorded a dance break, "Very Soft Shoes," as dull as it is gratuitous. He's also part of a trio contemplating making a break for "Normandy" (fun for the lyricists; otherwise why?). Brilliant comic actor Brooks Ashmanskas is grievously underused as the Wizard, but it's a gig, and you can enjoy his face when the action dulls.

Which is never, of course, when Foster's on the scene! From the moment she heaves herself --along with assorted scary stowaways – out of the moat and over the rampart, she has us all in thrall.

Sutton Foster is a goofy genius as swamp-bred Princess Winnifred (would you expect anything less?), but Palladino has given the character a bit more depth. This Fred is an empath as well as a athletic phenom: before mounting the twenty mattresses that will test her mettle, she finds time to commiserate with Lady Larkin (Nikki Renee Daniel, of golden voice) after a failed attempt to flee the kingdom. So luscious and committed are the scenes of Larkin contemplating parenthood with her vain, dim beloved, Sir Harris (Will Chase), they threaten to steal the show.

It does run overly long, packing in several extraneous scenes. As the Jester (here a buttoned-down majordomo who never gets to jest), Daniel Breaker – a superb singer – is accorded a dance break, "Very Soft Shoes," as dull as it is gratuitous. He's also part of a trio contemplating making a break for "Normandy" (fun for the lyricists; otherwise why?). Brilliant comic actor Brooks Ashmanskas is grievously underused as the Wizard, but it's a gig, and you can enjoy his face when the action dulls.

Which is never, of course, when Foster's on the scene! From the moment she heaves herself --along with assorted scary stowaways – out of the moat and over the rampart, she has us all in thrall.

 "SHYYYYYY …." You want the contrarian boast to last forever – and given Foster's  powerful pipes, it very nearly does.