Stars are aligning on stage this week — though in most cases, you’d better stay out of their orbit.
Forest Whitaker may have an Oscar under his belt (for “The Last King of Scotland”) but his Broadway debut is largely inconsequential — he brings no heft or insight to Erie Smith, the small-time gambler in Eugene O’Neill’s two-hander, “Hughie.” Smith’s been played by the tough-guy likes of Al Pacino, Jason Robards and Brian Dennehy, so Whitaker’s soft-toned take is laudable — without making much of an impression.
You’re more likely to remember the gorgeous set: the darkened lobby of a ghostly hotel, dominated by a steep, foreboding staircase. Michael Grandage’s direction emphasizes a spooky atmosphere that makes you wonder if the characters — Frank Wood plays the other, mostly silent, one — are dead and in some kind of purgatory.
It’s an interesting thought to ponder, which you’ll have time to do as you daydream during Whitaker’s monotone monologues. Better luck next time. At the Booth Theatre through June 12.
His turn in “Bridge of Spies” landed him an Oscar nomination, but Mark Rylance is at his finest onstage. Too bad the slight “Nice Fish” is nowhere near demanding enough for Rylance’s supersize talent.
The actor co-wrote the show with Louis Jenkins — whose prose poems Rylance read by way of acceptance speeches at his first two Tony wins — but the material is a little too cutesy. Jim Lichtscheidl has a stoic stance as a fellow fisherman, and the set is lovely — an inclined plane covered with a white sheet, to suggest a frozen lake — but basically this is a bunch of guys trying to project pseudo0-deep meaning into their hobby.
Of course Rylance is wonderful, and slyly funny as a doofus ice angler — that’s why you’re there, right? Still, a lot of quirk only goes a little way. St. Ann’s Warehouse through March 27.
After “Heroes,” playing Spock in the “Star Trek” reboots further raised Zachary Quinto’s profile among sci-fi geeks. But even they may be flabbergasted by the star’s newest theatrical outing, “Smokefall.”
Noah Haidle’s magical-realistic play lays the whimsy on with a trowel, to the detriment of any emotional payoff. The acting is uneven at best: Quinto doesn’t do all that much, but at least Robin Tunney (TV’s “The Mentalist”) is quietly melancholy in her stage debut. A strikingly ugly plywood set further hurts the production. Lucille Lortel Theatre through March 20.
Decades later, Ralph Macchio can’t shake “The Karate Kid” — it doesn’t help that he still looks incredibly boyish in his early 50s. While it’s sweet to see him venture out in a small off-Broadway show, you wish he’d picked a better one than “A Room of My Own.”
Macchio’s Carl Morelli looks back to 1979, when he was 13 and sharing a Greenwich Village studio apartment with his parents and his older sister — all of them the loudest version of Italian-Americans you can imagine. Thank god for Mario Cantone, who’s very funny as the semicloseted uncle.
The weirdest thing about Charles Messina’s autobiographical play is how radically different the two Carls are. The grown-up one is soft-spoken and appears fundamentally nice, while the young one is a toxic, profanity-spewing kid. Maybe the real show is what happened to Carl on the way to adulthood. June Havoc Theatre through March 13.
Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o didn’t strike any false notes as a captive war bride in the off-Broadway premiere of “Eclipsed” last year. There’s no reason to fear she’ll falter in the show’s Broadway transfer, which started previews this week. Danai “Michonne” Gurira’s drama demands a cohesive ensemble, and Nyong’o played by those rules, never pulling the spotlight to herself, as so many attention-hungry stars do. John Golden Theatre through June 19.