Cameron Mackintosh, who brought us Cats, The Phantom of the Opera and Miss Saigon, is presenting a Broadway revival of his long running smash hit musical Les Miserables just over three years after the show, which is still running in London, closed a successful run here in May of 2003. Directed by John Caird and Trevor Nunn, the same team that directed and adapted the first, this new version with fresh orchestrations by Christopher Jahnke has been slightly scaled down for the smaller stage and boasts an entirely new cast of excellent singers, but the evening feels like a vibrant carbon copy of the masterful original without its stirring heart.

George Bernard Shaw is a world renowned British playwright, a literary figure whose impressive body of work lists several novels and more than 50 plays including Pygmalion (1912), which was turned into the perfectly sublime musical My Fair Lady. At the time of his death in 1950 he was considered by many to be one of the greatest playwrights in the English language. His plays are filled with wit and are striking because of his comments on contemporary issues and values that encourage the audience to become engaged in evaluating the world.

David Hare’s new drama, The Vertical Hour, the first of his plays to premier on Broadway, continues his discussion of the war in Iraq, which was the basis of his most recent New York production, Stuff Happens, at the Public theatre. The central character is played by the much acclaimed film star Julianne Moore, an actress whose film work reflects thoughtful subtleties. Making her Broadway debut here she is decidedly miscast in a role that appears to be complex, but which is unfortunately underdeveloped.

A glossily refurbished revival of the Michael Bennett classic, A Chorus Line, has arrived on Broadway 16 years after the endearing musical ended a nearly 15 year run becoming in the process one of the most successful Broadway musicals ever. When it opened in 1975 Chorus Line was considered an extraordinary ground breaking achievement winning nine Tony awards including wins for best score by Marvin Hamlisch, best lyrics by Edward Kleban, best book by James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante as well as multiple wins for the actors. The current reincarnation clones the brilliant original in almost every detail right down to the costumes, and while the dancing remains gripping, the evening fails as drama where the original soared.

Martin Short the Tony award winning star of Little Me has come to Broadway with his very own show Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, a blissfully entertaining spoof of the current trend by stars to tell their life stories on The Great White Way. The multi award winning Short has starred in several films, but is probably best known for his television appearances that includes an Emmy Award for his work on SCTV Comedy Network. He is an immensely talented physical comedian that has given us stand out characterizations on “Saturday Night Live” as Ed Grimley, Jackie Rogers Jr., songwriter Irving Cohen and lawyer Nathan Thurman as well as snaring two Ace Awards for comedy specials he co-wrote, produced and starred in. The greatly admired wit created the hilarious Jiminy Glick for “Primetime Glick,” and even had his own daily show, “The Martin Short Show,” so there are apparently few limits to his extraordinary gifts.
Co- written by Short with Daniel Goldfarb Fame Becomes Me is an outrageously fictionalized autobiography about an over the hill celebrity, who bares his soul on stage. Created as a satire on ego tripping stars like Elaine Stritch, Billy Crystal, and Suzanne Sommers, who have spilled their guts in the name of art, the show is a wacky pack of lies with an edgy charm that is built around Short’s many talents. He unabashedly announces right up front “If I’d saved, I wouldn’t be here,” and that is probably the only telling moment in the entire surreal evening.

The Drowsy Chaperone, a spoof of Broadway musicals from the 1920’s, is an homage to the golden era of theatre when people longed for nothing more than to be magically transported to another world. Although little more than a parody of stock characters singing a pastiche of songs from the period that steels boldly from later day musicals as well, the evening is served with such tremendous style and wit that the loving tribute actually stops time. We are allowed for a brief hour and 40 minutes to chase all the blues away and escape into the madness of the musical theatre world.The evening begins with the audience sitting in a pitch black theatre for a few moments before we hear the voice of our host, simply referred to as Man in Chair, saying “Dear Lord please let it be good.” We are then taken into the cluttered New York City apartment of this die hard musical theatre fan, where he sits stage right in an overstuffed easy chair next to his record player. Yes record player, no CDs for him, he loves the static from the needle saying, “To me that’s the sound of a time machine starting up.”

When Sara Ruhl’s play The Clean House begins we are confronted with a character in a spotlessly clean all white house telling a rather long and apparently very funny joke in Portuguese. There are no subtitles, but we know the joke is funny from the character’s demonstrative body language and the enjoyable relish with which she embellishes her tale.We soon learn that she is Matilde (Vanessa Aspillaga) the Brazilian maid of Lane (Blair Brown) a cleanliness obsessed workaholic doctor, who freely admits, “I did not go to medical school to clean my o

wn house,” and herein is one of the comedy’s central conflicts. Matilde soon confesses to us that she doesn’t like to clean; in fact cleaning makes her depressed, so much so that she would much prefer to spend her time discovering the world’s funniest joke.Virginia (Jill Clayburgh) Lane’s sister, who uses cleaning to make herself feel better insists that, “People who give up the privilege of cleaning their own houses are insane people,” and comes to Matide’s rescue by offering to clean her sister’s home for her.
When Lane realizes to her horror that Virginia has been cleaning her house instead of Matilde, she fires the maid, but events turn even bleaker when the three discover Charles (John Dossett), Lane’s surgeon husband, is having an affair with Ana (Concetta Tomei) his 67 year old breast cancer patient, who the surgeon believes to be his soul mate.