The Cher Show (Neil Simon Theatre)

By Harry Forbes

If you saw “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical” (soon to close), you’ll be forgiven for a nagging sense of deja vu in that both that jukebox musical bio and this one coincidentally share the same basic structure of three women playing their titular star at different stages of her career.

However, as Rick Elice’s book for this one is several degrees stronger than the one for “Summer,” and the triptych of stars are overall better utilized, we can forgive the similarity.

Stephanie J. Block, who made her Broadway debut several years ago playing Liza Minnelli in “The Boy from Oz,” again very successfully assumes the persona of a famous entertainer in her iconic Star stage. She has the voice and mannerisms down pat. And, to their considerable credit, so do Teal Wicks and Micaela Diamond as the middle period (Lady) and teenage (Babe) versions of Cher. Part of Elice’s conceit is to have the three talking amongst themselves rather in the manner of Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women.” (Thereafter all similarities to that towering Pulitzer Prize-winning work end.)

Elice has captured the “voice” of the public Cher, her sardonic humor and nonchalance, and the three ladies have done so as well.

The narrative starts with Cher, the troubled teenager dealing with racial taunts at school for being a half Armenian “half-breed,” as her later hit song would immortalize, albeit with a Native American slant, though she is bolstered by her warmly supportive mother Georgia (Emily Skinner). Her innate shyness starts to erode when she meets the controlling Sonny Bono (Jarrod Spector) who eases her way into show business, first as a backup singer for Phil Spector (Michael Fatica), then as half of the act that would soon be known as Sonny & Cher. We see their initial success in the U.K. on the Top of the Pops television series, then getting their own successful television series, marital squabbles and divorce, the TV reunion, Cher’s romance with Gregg Allman (Matthew Hydzik) and his substance abuse issues, her affair with a bagel guy Rob Camilletti (Michael Campayno) and ultimately, her success as an Oscar-winning film star and a solo vocal artist.

I’d say Douglas McGrath’s script for the Carole King musical “Beautiful” set the gold standard for incorporating a star’s hit parade into a reasonably mature telling of a life story. Elice, who co-authored the “Jersey Boys” book, doesn’t measure up to that, but at least Cher’s bumpy relationship with Sonny, and other personal and career pitfalls are not glossed over.

Various luminaries make cameo appearances here. There’s her ace designer Bob Mackie (Michael Berresse), The Dave Clark Five (actually not much like that popular group), a rather crude travesty of a Lucille Ball impression by Skinner as she advises Cher to dump Sonny as she did Desi, and Robert Altman (Berresse again) who pep talks Cher in her Broadway acting debut. (It was “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean,” though the title is never mentioned.)

Christopher Gatelli’s choreography captures all the moves you’d expect. The “Dark Lady” number with an excellent Ashley Blair Fitzgerald and some hunky male dancers got one of the biggest hands of the evening.

The set design by Christine Jones and Brett J. Banakis goes for flash over class, Ditto Kevin Adams’ lighting, especially during the obligatory Vegasy finale with positively blinding lights.

Bob Mackie himself has designed the costumes which are replicas (or close approximations) of the censor-worrying ones Cher actually wore.

Daryl Waters’ music supervision, orchestrations and arrangements pay appropriate homage to the original charts, except when the hits are used as part of the narrative, as when, for instance, Gloria enjoins Cher “You’d Better Sit Down Kids,” or Lucy improbably does “Heart of Stone.” But “I Got You, Babe,” “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves” and even her weekly “Vamp” song from the TV series are all here.

I do wish they had found a way to incorporate some of Cher’s lovely early covers of material such as “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” but, as it is, the evening quite a songfest.

Jason (“Avenue Q”) Moore directs with the requisite affinity for the material.

(Neil Simon Theatre, Neil Simon Theatre (250 West 52nd Street; Ticketmaster.com or 877-250-2929)

Photo by Joan Marcus: The Cast of THE CHER SHOW on Broadway

American Son (Booth Theatre)

By Harry Forbes

A separated mixed race couple -- African-American Kendra (Kerry Washington) and white Scott (Steven Pasquale) -- wait anxiously for news of their son Jamal who’s gone missing after leaving home in his car the night before. They fear that as a strapping six foot two black kid with cornrows and baggy pants, he may have run afoul of a bigoted cop, despite the young man’s impeccable education and good breeding. Rookie policeman Larkin (Jeremy Jordan) at the station house is none too forthcoming with details, and the parents’ hysteria grows with each passing moment, as they wait anxiously for the promised officer (Eugene Lee) who will know more.

Christopher Demos-Brown’s play is reasonably suspenseful, and offers four meaty roles to his actors, especially for Washington, but this feels rather like a TV police procedural with a didactic overlay of Black Lives Matter and present day race relations messaging. Still, those vitally important issues are intelligently presented from every angle.

At my performance, I felt the crowd was a bit restless, though the candy wrappers and fidgeting subsided as the play neared its tense climax, and gave the cast a deserved enthusiastic ovation at the end.

Demos-Brown does his best to to give us conflict, but one has to suspend some disbelief as each time Larkin or Lieutenant Stokes seems about to impart a tidbit of crucial information, the parents’ aggressive questioning hardly allows the officers to impart what they know.

Racial tensions come to the fore not only between Kendra and Scott and the officers, but between themselves as they seemingly never did during their years of marriage. Jamal was primed to go to West Point, but it seems he had conflicting issues. And though Scott believes he has a good relationship with Jamal, there were serious identify issues, and Jamal was deeply disturbed by Scott’s walking out on Kendra.

I’m reluctant to give more details as even the smallest points are revealed very slowly.

Washington has the lion’s share of dramatic outbursts and superbly displays the emotions of an understandably distraught mother. She arrives at the station house first, and indignantly rebuts the rookie’s suggestions that her Emily Dickinson-quoting son might have a street name or a gold tooth. Pasquale whose character is an FBI man and tellingly, is able to wrest more information from Larkin than his wife had done, has the requisite authority. Jordan, in a rather startling and impressive change of pace, does very well as the doltish cop putting his casually racist foot in his mouth at every turn. And Lee strikes just the right note of paternal empathy and no-nonsense authority when he makes his late entrance.

Kenny Leon directs with customary skill, keeping the tension as taut as the didacticism of the play will allow.

Derek McLane’s set -- the waiting room of a Miami police station --  feels as coldly desolate as such a place would in the wee hours of the morning, with complementary lighting by Peter Kaczorowski.  

Peter Fitzgerald’s sound design, including the realistic thunderstorm outside, adds to the bleak ambience.

The ending of this one act play is shockingly abrupt, but the audience responds emotionally, demonstrating they were, in fact, absorbed all along.

(Booth Theatre, 222 W 45th Street; Telecharge.com or 212-239-6200; through January 27)

Network (Belasco Theatre)

By Harry Forbes

I must confess I have not been the keenest fan of trendy director Ivo van Hove, but this exciting production of “Network,” based on the 1976 film by writer Paddy Chayefsky, may have just turned the tide for me. Following the screenplay virtually verbatim, this stage adaptation -- acclaimed at London’s National Theatre -- proves quite a thrilling piece of theater, and Bryan Cranston knocks it way out of the park with his sensational performance in the Oscar-winning Peter Finch role of Howard Beale, a network anchorman whose firing after 25 years leads to an on-air breakdown.

That breakdown -- including an audacious vow to kill himself on air in a week’s time -- leads to high ratings and a callous decision on the part of the fictional UBS network brass to keep him on the air. The decision is fueled by ratings-crazed programming chief Diana Christensen who takes control of the show.

The movie cast of Finch, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, and Robert Duvall was pretty unbeatable, but in addition to Cranston’s outstanding work here, Tony Goldwyn and Tatiana Maslany perform impressively as news chief (and Beale friend) Max Schumacher and ruthless programming head Diana Christensen who wrestles the now high-rated “Howard Beale Show” (Beale now labeled the “mad prophet of the airwaves”) away from Max, while engaging in a torrid affair with the aging (and long-time married) news veteran. (There’s an exceptionally vivid simulated sex scene, which follows a live conversation between Max and Diana on the street outside the theater before seamlessly moving into the alley and then onto the stage.)

Not all the roles are as felicitously cast as the three principals, but certainly Alyssa Bresnahan is outstanding as Max’s wife, and delivers her impassioned speech to Max about his infidelity with much the same bravado as Beatrice Straight in the film. Nick Wyman also makes the most of his role of Communications Corporation of America head, who appears God-like on a high platform, as he puts Howard in his place about the economic realities of television.

Faithful as Hall has stayed to Chayefsky, much of the detail of the Ecumenical Liberation Party, the radical organization that Diana enlists to provide real-life terrorist footage, has been trimmed in favor of the main story arc.

Jan Versweyveld’s set, a mass of video screens both large and small (mirroring the TV monitor imagery of the film), and segmented playing areas for control room, set, office, bar, is highly effective. When an area is out of one’s sightline, one can always watch the screens. And hand-held cameras are able to follow Cranston’s every move, adding a rare intimacy to his performance. Tal Yarden’s video design, so important to the overall concept here, is quite outstanding; period commercials and actual news footage of the period abound.

An D’Huys’ costumes and Eric Sleichim’s sound design and music are also tops.

Adapter Lee (“Billy Elliot”) Hall kept the time frame as it was in the film, with references to Patty Hearst, Gerald Ford, and so on, but the overall vibe seems resolutely contemporary. Certainly, the themes are still uncannily relevant: the public’s mindless devotion to the tube (though, of course, now we would add the internet), the obsession for high ratings at (almost) any cost, the public’s disaffection for the status quo, and the mindless adulation of a demagogue figure.

Though the Belasco audience dutifully shouts out Beale’s “mad as hell” trademark slogan as requested by the UBS warm-up guy (Barzin Akhavan), there’s plenty of genuine response during the post-show video showing a succession of presidential inaugurals. The Obama sequence, for instance, is, predicatably, roundly cheered, while the one for You-Know-Who generates almost frighteningly vociferous booing.

But political matters aside, Cranston is delivering one of the major performances of the season and must not be missed.

(Belasco Theatre, 111 W 44th Street; www.Telecharge.com or 212-239-6200; through April 28)

The Hard Problem (Lincoln Center Theater)

By Harry Forbes

Faith in a higher being is pitted against hard-nosed science in Tom Stoppard’s latest play which was first mounted in London in 2015. It was Nicholas Hytner’s last production as head of the National Theatre, and it was the great playwright’s first new play in nine years.

At about one hour and 40 minutes, without intermission, and with an appealing heroine to give humanizing ballast to the intellectual arguments, “The Hard Problem” – that is, getting to the roots of human consciousness -- proves rather less daunting than some of his other works, which is not say that you might not find yourself a bit muddled somewhere along the line.

Cannily directed on this shore by Jack O’Brien and sharply acted by an expert cast, it has much to commend it. The action plays out on David Rockwell’s attractively adaptable set, lighted by Japhy Weideman. Catherine Zuber has provided the apt costumes. There’s an affecting piano score by Bob James.

When we first meet Hilary (Adelaide Clemens), she’s a psychology student applying for a position as a research assistant at a neuroscience think tank, the Krohl Institute for Brain Science. Despite vastly different worldviews, she embarks on an affair with her tutor Spike (Chris O’Shea).

Hilary believes in God, and says her prayers every night, while sincerely endeavoring to be a good person, a concept of dubious merit to Spike who believes, much like her other colleagues at Krohl, that altruism is merely a form of Darwinian self-interest. Hilary’s fervent prayers concern the child she had as a teenager and had to give up. In one poignant scene, she asks the atheistic Spike to pray for the girl whose whereabouts she doesn’t know. But Spike refuses, even challenging the genuineness of maternal love.

The play wraps up with a resolution that is either proof of Divine Providence or simply an instance of mere chance.

The cast is excellent including Eshan Bajpay as Amal, a fellow applicant to the Institute, then colleague, Robert Petkoff as her supervisor Leo, Karoline Xu as her adoring math genius protégé Bo, and Jon Tenney as her alternately sensitive and hard-nosed hedge-funder who runs the Institute with the hope of finding a connection between the brain and financial patterns.

(Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, 150 West 65 Street; lct.org or 212-239-6200; through January 6)

Photo by Paul Kolnik: Chris O'Shea and Adelaide Clemens

Mother of the Maid (The Public Theater)

By Harry Forbes

This clever and absorbing play tells the familiar story of Joan of Arc from the perspective of the saint’s mother. In playwright Jane Anderson’s hands, it’s a conceit that really works.

And best of all, it provides a great vehicle for Glenn Close in her first New York performance since her much acclaimed resurrection of Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard.” And what a contrast!

Without makeup and outfitted (by Jane Greenwood) as the very picture of a hardworking, pragmatic farmer’s wife leading a hardscrabble existence. By turns simple, wise, critical, loving, determined, sorrowful and bravely steadfast, she runs an impressive gamut.

As for Joan -- beautifully played by Grace Van Patton -- she’s first a moody teenager, concealing the miraculous vision she finally admits to her mother Isabelle, then increasingly confident in her mission, but this is Isabelle Arc’s story.

Neither Isabelle nor her husband Jacques (an excellent Dermot Crowley) trust the veracity of Joan’s heavenly injunction to lead an army, and adamantly oppose her stated plan to rout the English who are occupying France. In fact, Jacques beats her and orders her brother Pierre (Andrew Hovelson) tie her to her bed.

But the local priest Father Gilbert (Daniel Pearce) intercedes and informs them the local bishop truly believes her story. The parents -- still skeptical -- eventually get on board and even follow Joan to the Dauphin’s court, though at first Isabelle comforts herself that Joan’s presence in the army is only “to keep the soldiers cheerful.”

There, Nicole (Kelley Curran in a lovely performance), a gracious court lady, takes Isabelle under wing and expresses great regard for Joan and admiration for her mother, but Isabelle will not be patronized. Pierre is made a knight and sent into battle with Joan, while Jacques, ever a caring father despite his gruffness, enjoins Pierre to look after her.

The narrative follows its inevitable course, but as it’s all from Isabelle’s perspective, if you think you’ve had your fill of Saint Joan this year -- after Manhattan Theatre Club’s solid revival -- you needn’t worry that this play covers the same ground.

John Lee Beatty’s scenic design -- which morphs from farmhouse to court banquet hall to prison -- is skillfully evocative, and Lap Chi Chu’s lighting provides a hugely important element in the intimate Anspacher space.

Anderson’s dialogue -- a mix of period and present-day jargon (and expletives) -- seems entirely apt throughout. (The playwright wrote the screenplay for Close’s acclaimed film “The Wife.”)

Director Matthew Penn draws fine performances from all and helms a well-paced production right from the start up through the moving last moments.

(The Public’s Anspacher Theater,  425 Lafayette Street; 212-967-7555 or www.publictheater.org; through December 23)

Photo by Joan Marcus: Glenn Close and Grace Van Patten