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B+ from Entertainment Weekly

The Rocky Horror Show review: Luke Evans was born to wear fishnets

The midnight cult movie makes its way back to the stage.

https://ew.com/the-rocky-horror-show-review-luke-evans-born-to-wear-fishnets-on-broadway-11956084

"It’s a tricky spot taking on such an iconic role originally played to perfection by Curry, but this is no mere shadow cast performance. Evans manages to capture the character’s scintillating combination of dangerous sexuality and emotional vulnerability, all while adding his own devilish spin. He also delivers a fresh interpretation courtesy of vocal deliveries that zig where Curry zagged, without sapping any power from the original songs that fans know and love. His tender yet powerful take on “I’m Going Home” (the emotional heart of the show) is a triumph."

AMNY

Review | ‘Rocky Horror’ time-warps into Studio 54’s ’70s excess

https://www.amny.com/entertainment/review-rocky-horror-time-warps-studio-54s/

"This “Rocky Horror” is not without flaws, but it hardly matters. The style carries you along, and the energy rarely falters. For nearly two hours, it delivers what it promises: a weird, exuberant, and thoroughly enjoyable night out. Participation optional, temptation unavoidable."

I haven't seen a review from People magazine before.

The Rocky Horror Show Returns to Broadway in a Campy, Luke Evans-Led Revival That Plays It Too Safe

The Roundabout Theatre Company's production delivers the surface pleasures of the provocative piece while sanding off the unruly spirit that made it a hit

https://people.com/the-rocky-horror-show-broadway-review-11954611

"Instead of communal mayhem, the evening settles into something far less satisfying: a half-participatory experience where no one, onstage or off, seems entirely sure of the rules. Even the fans who arrive in costume appear to be getting only part of the experience, while those who don't dress up are left without a clear way in.

It's almost as if, in trying to tame the show's unruly spirit, Pinkleton's Rocky Horror forgets that it was built to break rules."

 

Deadline

‘The Rocky Horror Show’ Broadway Review: A Much Needed Time Warp With Luke Evans & Rachel Dratch In Vivacious Revival

https://deadline.com/2026/04/rocky-horror-show-broadway-review-1236867882/

"With immensely appealing performances from Luke Evans (yes, he most certainly can sing) as the sinister Frank-N-Furter, Rachel Dratch as the droll narrator quick with the audience repartee, the always excellent Andrew Durand as uptight (until he’s not) Brad and Stephanie Hsu as timid (until she’s not) Janet, this Roundabout-produced Rocky Horror revival is a first-rate presentation of a property that, along with John Waters’ early work, pretty much defined a certain strain of ’70s counter-culture fare."

Theatrely

THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW Is a Burst of Vibrant Queer Joy — Review

https://www.theatrely.com/post/the-rocky-horror-show-is-a-burst-of-vibrant-queer-joy-review

2 1/2 stars from NYP

‘The Rocky Horror Show’ review: Broadway show’s got killer performances, but, dammit Janet, make it more fun

https://nypost.com/2026/04/23/entertainment/the-rocky-horror-show-review-broadway-shows-got-killer-performances-but-dammit-janet-make-it-more-fun/

"there’s much to like, even adore, in Pinkleton’s revival — from its Fritz Lang-y metallic manikins to a dark and seductive castle set that feels ripped from a Jim Steinman music video to two knockout performances from Luke Evans as Dr. Frank-N-Furter and Hsu as Janet. Yet when the plot practically disappears midway through Act 2, and the crowd’s lips are zipped, you just crave something more, more, more."

Three stars from The Guardian

The Rocky Horror Show review – campy musical returns to Broadway in need of an energy boost

Studio 54, New York

The 1973 cult favorite is back with a stacked cast, including Juliette Lewis, Luke Evans and Rachel Dratch, but only flashes of genuine fun

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2026/apr/23/the-rocky-horror-show-review-broadway

"The crispness that Pinkleton brought to Oh, Mary! is not present here; there is more of what feels like aimless shuffling around the stage than should be encountered during a costly night (or afternoon) at the theater. A shadow cast acting out the movie during an umpteenth midnight screening? Sure, they’re allowed to be a little listless. But one would certainly prefer that a professional version of Rocky Horror be tighter, more relentlessly in pursuit of our attention.

One increasingly misses the assuredness of the film, as Pinkleton’s staging tilts ever more into blurry abstraction. There are, to be fair, scattered highlights that briefly snap things back into focus. Evans, in the appropriate heels and bustier but saddled with a strangely limp and wet-looking wig, is unsteady with Frank-n-Furter’s dialogue; he appears a tad self-conscious, unwilling to commit to the character’s high melodrama. But he comes alive in his songs, especially when he lets his rich, Elton John-ian tenor reach full blare in I’m Going Home, the prettiest of several pretty songs on the setlist."

NYT Critic's Pick from Shaw

Review: ‘The Rocky Horror Show’ Rewards Your Sense of Antici…pation

Sam Pinkleton’s new revival at Studio 54 gives us the big gay mayhem we want while also maintaining some order via Rachel Dratch’s droll Narrator.

"So, damn it, Janet, I’m glad that the show hasn’t entirely worked out how to do deal with the audience. The show can’t just be a sacred relic — it needs a bit of destabilizing, a tussle between the stage and the seats. Roundabout’s professionalism and coy signage can’t entirely keep the fans in check, which gives the revival itself a sense that it might spin off its axis. What will it be like the night you go? Dratch will probably say something hysterically quelling; Evans will probably knock your stockings off. But who can say? The point of “Rocky Horror” is to lose control. C’mon, let’s do it again."

NY Stage Review

The Rocky Horror Show: Let’s Not (Do The Time Warp Again), And Say We Did

By Bob Verini

★★☆☆☆ Overproduced, underconceived, superfluous revival of a property long past its sell-by date

https://nystagereview.com/2026/04/23/the-rocky-horror-show-lets-not-do-the-time-warp-again-and-say-we-did/

 

The Rocky Horror Show: Roundabout Rolls Out a Not So Hot Patootie

By Michael Sommers

★★☆☆☆ Luke Evans, Juliette Lewis and Rachel Dratch appear amid a conventional revival of an unconventional musical

https://nystagereview.com/2026/04/23/the-rocky-horror-show-roundabout-rolls-out-a-not-so-hot-patootie/

4 stars from TimeOut

Broadway review: The Rocky Horror Show is deliciously warped and timely

https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/broadway-review-the-rocky-horror-show-is-deliciously-warped-and-timely-042426

I commented in the previews thread about how small the cast was, and someone said, "the story really doesn’t need a bigger cast. It’s the vastness of the stage and lack of set that makes it feel so small."

I very much disagreed, so was glad to see Feldman's TimeOut review call it out.

"The actors playing the youngest and the oldest versions play only those characters throughout the show, but the other eight actors are overworked into multiple roles; this is hardest on the two men, one of whom plays 10 parts and the other 15. The smallness of the cast seems less like an artistic strategy than a cost-cutting measure, especially given the rest of this strikingly cheap-looking production"

 

Holdren in Vulture takes the time to call out most of the members of the cast by name...while saying the show is dire.

Beaches Did Make Me Sad, But Not the Way It Wants To

A ton of performing talent, led by Jessica Vosk and Kelli Barrett, is in the service of enormous and unexamined clichés. 

https://www.vulture.com/article/beaches-made-me-sad-but-not-the-way-it-wants-to.html

"The fact that Jessica Vosk is singing her butt off as Cee Cee up on the Majestic stage, and really doing her best underneath an endless succession of red wigs, is therefore both good and, well, not bad but somehow sad. It’s nice to hear great singers sing. It’s sad to hear them pour themselves out in service of something so fundamentally trite — and something that, in Vosk’s case, won’t ever emerge from a shadow no matter how well she lands the punch lines and rattles the rafters."

...

"Let’s not leave hard-working actors to sell half-baked goods or make them use their chops to muscle life into the lifeless eight times a week. Because along with Vosk, there is a lot of vitality in Beaches, most especially bursting from the four young performers who play childhood and teen versions of Bertie and Cee Cee. Again, more is more, but at least here that more is giving some talented kids the chance to shine. As the teens (along with various other roles), Bailey Ryon and Emma Ogea add spark to the contrivance of that epistolary number (“Show the World Who You Are”), but it’s really Zeya Grace and Samantha Schwartz as the littles who scamper away with big chunks of the show. While the sexed-up Baby June mode in which Dart has fashioned little Cee Cee is sometimes unnerving (“Stick out your titties!” she squeals at a shocked baby Bertie), Schwartz is one hell of a mini-dynamo. I’m both excited and worried for her. There’s so much skill there, and so much joyful effervescence. I hope she can maintain both. And that the future gives her better places to go than Beaches."

Another "Little Me" revival with the combined Belle role for Streep..

Vulture

In The Balusters, the Trash Cans Are All Neatly Lined Up

https://www.vulture.com/article/theater-review-the-balusters-lindsay-abaire-anika-noni-rose.html

"It’s cleverly devised, although for a play about the corrupting influence of obsessing over peace and quiet it’s more than a tad pat. Though Lindsay-Abaire lingers on the idea that everyone has their own blind spots, he allows one character to become more villainous than most and another to emerge as near saintly. It’s a tidy conclusion, complete with a sturdy button of a kiss-off line. The play’s clean lines weaken it, letting it speed uninterrupted, like a car along that esplanade, toward judgment and satisfaction. There’s something to be said for disrupting the picturesque, and stopping traffic."

Deadline

‘The Balusters’ Broadway Review: Richard Thomas And Anika Noni Rose Battle Thy Neighbor In David Lindsay-Abaire Comedy

https://deadline.com/2026/04/the-balusters-broadway-review-1236865780/

"Hell hath no fury like a well-intentioned self-appointed watchdog challenged, as David Lindsay-Abaire’s new ensemble comedy The Balusters reminds us. We’ve seen this group dynamic before – in real life possibly, but on stage definitely, most recently in the brilliant Eureka Day and surreal The Minutes – and if the excellently cast play opening tonight on Broadway in a Manhattan Theatre Club production doesn’t add significantly to the committee-implosion genre it certainly has its fun along the way to its comeuppances."

B- from Entertainment Weekly

The Balusters review: David Lindsay-Abaire's play about a homeowners association dabbles in sitcom stereotypes

https://ew.com/the-balusters-review-broadway-david-lindsay-abaire-11954567

"By the time The Balusters reaches its conclusion, the play has forced its characters and audience to explore the intricacies of racism, discrimination, privilege, and those annoying biases that we all contain, and asked the question of how we determine a bad person is a bad person. It's uncomfortable, hokey (in a respectable way, most of the time), and keen, although it could do with a bit of sharpening in some elements."

Variety

‘The Balusters’ Broadway Review: Anika Noni Rose, Richard Thomas Star in Brilliant and Brutally Funny Look at a Dysfunctional Neighborhood Association

Critics Pick

https://variety.com/2026/legit/news/balusters-broadway-review-anika-noni-rose-richard-thomas-brilliant-comedy-1236726809/

"Written by David Lindsay-Abaire with a keen understanding of human nature and directed by Kenny Leon with a master’s skill for building onstage drama to a fever pitch, “The Balusters,” which debuts tonight at Manhattan Theatre Club, may be the most vital and timely show on Broadway this season. It’s definitely the funniest."

NY Stage Review

The Balusters: Love Thy Rule-Following, Historically Appropriate Neighbor

By Melissa Rose Bernardo

April 21, 2026

★★★★☆ Kenny Leon directs David Lindsay-Abaire’s new comedy about a neighborhood association gone wrong

https://nystagereview.com/2026/04/21/the-balusters-love-thy-rule-following-historically-appropriate-neighbor/

 

The Balusters: There Goes the Neighborhood

By Frank Scheck

April 21, 2026

★★★★☆ A series of neighborhood association meetings turns contentious in David Lindsay-Abaire's hilarious comedy

https://nystagereview.com/2026/04/21/the-balusters-there-goes-the-neighborhood/

Theatermania

Review: The Balusters Is the Most Fun You’ll Ever Have at an HOA Meeting

https://www.theatermania.com/news/review-the-balusters-is-the-most-fun-youll-ever-have-at-an-hoa-meeting_1833619/

"While the play is taking shots at everyone for everything, the “woke” younger generations get dumped on the most. But, by virtue of time, the youth always win. That’s the way of it here, though the play’s final moments suggest that the new guard is as corrupt as the old, and class solidarity beats all other kinds. This message requires a character shift that didn’t work for me, but made for a great debate topic with my companion afterwards.'

NYT Critic's Pick from Shaw

Review: In ‘The Balusters,’ Neighborly Dysfunction Is on the Agenda

David Lindsay-Abaire’s comedy about a wealthy homeowners association thrown into disarray makes a case for the same social compact it skewers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/theater/the-balusters-review.html

"This psychological delicacy comes as no surprise: Lindsay-Abaire wrote one of our most persuasive dramas on social collision, “Good People,” which explores the two ends of the class struggle in New England. I may have quibbles with the way his plot here unfolds, particularly the way it incorporates Luz, whose circumstances must be manipulated in unrealistic ways. But all boulevard comedies lean on coincidence, and I guess that applies even when the boulevard is a residential esplanade. (I laughed while I watched “The Balusters”; I only grumbled while thinking about it hours later.)"