Profile for MemorableUserName

Yeah, Stock is above the title, and I doubt he would want to petition for Featured anyway or they would grant it if he did. That placement's solid.

https://playbill.com/production/little-bear-ridge-road-broadway-booth-theatre-2025

The Wrap's ever contrarian Hofler is negative

‘Oedipus’ Broadway Review: Mark Strong and Lesley Manville Make the Same Old Mistakes

A prestige theatrical event from London turns out to be more parody than tragedy

https://www.thewrap.com/oedipus-broadway-review-mark-strong-lesley-manville

 

"Manville disappoints. Except for her big Liz Taylor moment, her vocally weak Jocasta recedes into Hildegard Bechtler’s set design of a campaign office-suite. The Oedipus political machine has a real money-flow problem, apparently. Despite it being election night, various muscle men appear on stage to remove the rented office furniture. They can’t wait until the election results are announced?"

TimeOut

Oedipus

4 out of 5 stars

Mark Strong and Lesley Manville shine in Robert Icke's version of the complex Greek tragedy.

https://www.timeout.com/newyork/theater/oedipus-broadway-review-mark-strong-lesley-manville-robert-icke

 

"Icke’s Oedipus is continuously engaging and smart, and it is exceedingly well performed by a cast that also includes Teagle F. Bougere, Bhasker Patel and Ani Mesa-Perez as aides and employees. Where it runs up against a wall—as many modern adaptations of ancient texts do—is in trying to make the story function without gods and fates. The possibility of divine machinations is brought up in passing here and there, but inconclusively. (Antigone: “I don’t believe in gods, I don’t think.” Merope: “Makes no difference whether you believe in them or not. Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.”) And that’s a particular problem for Oedipus, because the original play is about the backfiring impossibility of trying to avoid predestiny. "

Holdren in Vulture is mostly (?) positive. Or more positive than not?

I’m Not a Regular Mom, I’m a Cool Mom: Robert Icke Does Oedipus

Robert Icke, known for dramatic remakings of ancient plays, turns to Sophocles' 'Oedipus,' and his production, while not flawless, is vivid and potent.

"In this Oedipus—premiered in Dutch at Toneelgroep and then remounted in the West End with its current stars, Lesley Manville and Mark Strong, as the fated mother-and-son/wife-and-husband at its center—Icke puts an eleventh-hour monologue roughly the size and weight of a city bus in Jocasta’s mouth. It’s where we learn her story in all its graphic detail, and though Manville is one hell of an actor—utterly at ease in one moment, ferocious in the next, destroyed in the one after that—even she can’t quite mask the overwriting, the authorial frisson over putting this character through really bad things, but, you know, in order to demonstrate that they’re really bad.

It’s a shame, because this Oedipus, when it tries a little less hard, is also full of potency. Manville and Strong crackle together — their chemistry is steamy and genuine and, in some of the production’s best moments, after all terrible secrets have been revealed, so is their body-wracking devastation."

 

3 1/2 stars from NYP

‘Oedipus’ review: Mark Strong and Lesley Manville are ferocious in a pulse-pounding Broadway tragedy

https://nypost.com/2025/11/13/entertainment/oedipus-review-mark-strong-lesley-manville-are-ferocious-in-pulse-pounding-broadway-tragedy

LA Times is positive

Mark Strong and Lesley Manville power Robert Icke’s sleek remake of ‘Oedipus’ on Broadway

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2025-11-13/review-theater-mark-strong-lesley-manville-robert-ickes-sophocles-oedipus-broadway

 

NYT Critic's Pick from Alexis Soloski

‘Oedipus’ Review: An Election-Night Thriller, Suffused With Dread

Mark Strong and Lesley Manville are superb as a doomed political power couple in Robert Icke’s adaptation of the Sophocles tragedy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/theater/oedipus-review-strong-manville.html?searchResultPosition=2

"Manville, whose performance won her an Olivier for the play’s run in London’s West End, is an actress of exceptional emotional expressiveness, expert at repression and just as skilled at letting that composure slip, often wildly. Her Jocasta is chic, charming and ambitious for her husband, an impeccable political wife.

She is also, as an Icke-enhanced back story shows, an anguished woman who has had to deny and disregard much of her past. While Sophocles is fundamentally incurious of what the taking of a child may do to a mother, Icke sticks his fingers right in that wound. As Jocasta moves from ignorance toward knowledge, fighting every new fact, Manville dismantles this woman’s carefully constructed identity, thread by thread, cell by cell. The questions of what does Jocasta know and when does she know it become the night’s true horror."

NY Stage Review

Oedipus: All About My Mother

By Melissa Rose Bernardo

★★★★☆ Lesley Manville and Mark Strong have disturbingly good chemistry as theater’s most famous twice-related couple

Oedipus: Fate Comes for Us All

By Frank Scheck

★★★★☆ Mark Strong and Lesley Manville deliver shattering performances in Robert Ickes’ modern adaptation of the classic Greek tragedy

I think this may be closer to what you want: 

https://forum.broadwayworld.com/thread/HELL-S-KITCHEN-Reviews/6

This thread appears to be about an off-Broadway show?

 

Carrie Coon in Bug seems like formidable competition (though it will have closed the same date, as currently scheduled).

eta: And Ayo Edibiri will have just opened in Proof.

NY Sun

Ariana DeBose Leads a Sterling Company in a New Off-Broadway Production of ‘The Baker’s Wife’

DeBose returns to the New York stage for the first time since winning a Tony Award nomination for ‘Summer: The Donna Summer Musical’ and an Oscar for her performance as Anita in Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of ‘West Side Story.’

https://www.nysun.com/article/ariana-debose-leads-a-sterling-company-in-a-new-off-broadway-production-of-the-bakers-wife

"Jason Sherwood’s cozy, charming scenic design reinforces this infectious esprit de romance, and I’m sure it could easily be adapted to a larger venue on Broadway. But I wouldn’t wait to see if Ms. DeBose’s schedule allows for such a transfer; catch this little marvel while you can."

Hofler in The Wrap is a rave

 

‘The Baker’s Wife’ Off-Broadway Review: Ariana DeBose and Scott Bakula Headline the Year’s Best Musical Revival

This long-neglected musical by Joseph Stein and Stephen Schwartz deserves an immediate transfer uptown

https://www.thewrap.com/the-bakers-wife-off-broadway-review-ariana-debose-scott-bakula

"For much of act one, the baker’s wife is an extremely reactive role, and that’s quite a switch for DeBose, who won an Oscar playing the fiery Anita in “West Side Story” and has hosted the Tony Awards no fewer than three times. Acting assignments don’t get much showier than hosting the Tonys. DeBose captivates here with her uncustomary reticence in “The Baker’s Wife” because we know it is only time before she’s going to burst out of that shell of respectability. And DeBose does so with glorious abandon singing not only “Meadowlark,” but the equally show-stopping “Where Is the Warmth?” in act two.

Bakula and DeBose deliver, but it’s the villagers who really carry this show. They’re its heart beat, and under Gordon Greenberg’s extremely detailed direction, several featured players register as vividly poignant as do DeBose and Bakula."

 

 

Vulture is mixed.

https://www.vulture.com/article/theater-review-bakers-wife-fixable-debose-bakula-schwartz.html

"The song has so much force that, like a comet pulled from orbit, its gravitational pull throws a light farce out of whack.

The same may be said for the casting of Geneviève, here played by Ariana DeBose, one of the most supremely willing-to-commit stage performers we have. (She loves to do the thing.) She’s delivering all her lines with a thick French purr while the rest of Greenberg’s cast tends toward gentler accents. She’s also triple-underling every reference to a love her character had before Aimable, a plot point that doesn’t get much elucidation in the book, and laying gesture upon gesture as she makes her way through her big solo. The resulting performance is terribly overwrought, and more than a little fun to watch in its grasping bigness. Either way, the result is that DeBose pulls the production’s focus over to Geneviève, a character who, despite the show’s title, really should be less than central to its interests. In Act Two, after running away, Geneviève keeps getting inserted back into the action in ways that defeat the musical’s structure, whereby one couple’s breakup serves as a jumping-off point for communal reckoning. DeBose, a great dancer, and Paul perform little dream ballets. Later, she sings “Where Is the Warmth?” while he lies in bed shirtless, a choice surely meant to distract from the dreariness of the song itself."

Daily Beast is mixed

Oscar Winner Ariana DeBose Takes on One of Musical Theater’s Biggest Songs

SING TO ME

In the new production of “The Baker’s Wife,” Ariana DeBose puts her spin on a ballad made famous by Patti LuPone.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/the-bakers-wife-review-ariana-debose-shines-in-underbaked-production

"When one or both of Ariana DeBose and Judy Kuhn are on stage all is right in Classic Stage Company’s revival of The Baker’s Wife. But without their charisma, stage presence, and creamily lovely singing, other elements of this musical—with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, and book by Joseph Stein—can seem rickety."

NY Stage Review

The Baker’s Wife: Redemption for a Musical With a Big Heart

By Bob Verini

November 11, 2025

★★★★☆ A flawless cast and thoughtful direction turn a famously problematic tuner into a darling, healing event

 

The Baker’s Wife: Fabled Flop Charms in Amiable Revival

By Steven Suskin

November 11, 2025

★★★☆☆ Scott Bakula, Adriana DeBose, and Judy Kuhn enhance Stephen Schwartz’s underbaked musical

Theatermania

Review: Michael Urie in a Clear and Queer Richard II Off-Broadway

Urie stars in the Red Bull Theater production at the Astor Place Theatre.

https://www.theatermania.com/news/review-michael-urie-in-a-clear-and-queer-richard-ii-off-broadway_1811463/

Richard II: Michael Urie Plays Shakespeare’s Materialistic, Superficial King

By Melissa Rose Bernardo

November 10, 2025

★★★☆☆ Red Bull Theater sets the Bard's first Henriad play in the decade of decadence

https://nystagereview.com/2025/11/10/richard-ii-michael-urie-plays-shakespeares-materialistic-superficial-king/

 

Richard II: This Campy Breed, This England

By Bob Verini

November 10, 2025

★★☆☆☆ Michael Urie and entourage double down on facile gimmickry and leave Shakespeare behind

https://nystagereview.com/2025/11/10/richard-ii-this-campy-breed-this-england/

I've been looking for The Wrap's review from the typically disagreeable Hofler. Turns out he's...positive.

‘The Queen of Versailles’ Broadway Review: Kristin Chenoweth and Stephen Schwartz Reunite for a MAGA Musical Nightmare

Florida’s billionaire class gets the musical it deserves with socialite Jackie Siegel

https://www.thewrap.com/queen-of-versailles-broadway-review-kristin-chenoweth-stephen-schwartz