Theater Reviews: Three Summer Shows (“Joy,” “Rolling Thunder,” “Ginger Twinses”) Rely Too Heavily on Nostalgia as Their Selling Points

Joy (c) Joan Marcus

Theater: Joy 
At the Laura Pels Theater 

Joy, the musicalized version of a Joy Mangano’s true life journey from struggling Long Island single mother to a QVC multimillionaire, rarely achieves the elated emotion synonymous with her name. It was also the tonal problem with David O’Russell’s 2015 movie version with the same title. Joy’s trial and tribulations before the admittingly happy ending of entrepreneurial success makes for a curious tale, but joy? No. However, like the movie version, there is a secret ingredient that makes the story engaging, and that is the actress playing Joy. Jennifer Lawrence received a surprise lone Oscar nomination for the film, providing a sympathetic portrayal of Mangano, which is the same quality the always engaging Betsy Wolfe (Mrs. Shakespeare in & Juliet) provides here. Ken Davenport and AnnMarie Milazzo, the show’s writers, do provide a musical comedy sheen over the story as Joy, always the problem solver, can’t figure out how to make her 1990’s life tenable when she loses her airline job and still has to run a household that includes her teenage daughter Christie (Honor Blue Savage), her ex-husband Tony (Brandon Espinoza), who lives in the basement, and her divorced parents (Adam Grupper and Jill Abramovitz). Only when she comes up with the idea of the Miracle Mop does any hope enter her life—but a woman with barely a savings account predictably runs into a lot of roadblocks, from the Connecticut men who run QVC to the company that manufactures the mops (Texan men, naturally) with barely any emotional support from her needy family, who has experienced too many of Joy’s crazy ideas. 

Reviews: No, Heather, It’s “Heathers The Musical’s” Turn (Again) Off-Broadway, and It’s a Hoot; While the Film “Unicorns” Tells a Sympathetic Love Story Between a Sexually Conflicted British Guy and a Gaysian Drag Queen

Heathers The Musical (c) Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade

Theater: Heathers The Musical 
At New World Stages 

The deafening cheers at the newly revived Heathers The Musical tell me an important characteristic about young audience members: They love their nostalgia, regardless of how pessimistic the original source material is. Heathers The Musical, which premiered at New World Stages in 2014 for a five-month stint, was adapted by Laurence O'Keefe and Kevin Murphy from the 1989 film that starred Winona Ryder as ordinary high school senior Veronica Sawyer, whose life changes when she is accepted into the most popular clique in school, the Heathers. This new production of the musical (back at New World Stages) originated in the UK, directed by Andy Fickman, hews close to the film’s plot, which has Veronica, now played with humor and ferocity by Lorna Courtney (who originated the titled character in & Juliet), also flirting with the outsider new kid, JD (Casey Likes, of Back to the Future), whose dark energy soon brings chaos to Westerberg High School, including, like, murder. Unlike the musical adaptation of Mean Girls, which also includes a plot of an outsider being adopted by the popular girls and would arrive on Broadway a few years later, Heathers The Musical goes down darker roads O'Keefe and Murphy don’t shy away from, making it closer in feels to the recent musicalize version of the film, Teeth. 

Film Review: Which Blockbuster Should You Watch This Holiday Weekend? The Best Is “Jurassic World Rebirth” —Fun in a Surprise-Free Way—Plus, Thoughts on Other Summer Films

Jurassic World Rebirth (c) Universal Pictures, Amblin Entertainment

Film: Jurassic World Rebirth 
In Cinemas 

The seventh film in the Jurassic Park series, Jurassic World Rebirth retains the World rebranding of the second trilogy, but essentially ignores everything about those movies (including stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, and there’s just one mention of Sam Neill’s Alan Grant) and ties up the whole “we live with dinosaurs now” thread in the first fifteen minutes. After that, it’s just a countdown before we follow a different eclectic group of dino food, I mean, thrill seekers, on their way to another island filled with rejected mutant dinosaurs after a horrific accident many years ago that involves the first of many hysterical product placements, with Snickers playing a major role here. The corporate baddie of Rebirth (there’s always one) is Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), a pharmaceutical exec who is funding a covert operation to extract dino DNA in order to cure all sorts of human diseases, a theory put forth by paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey). Along for a huge payday are their ex-military escorts, led by Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) and Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), but unexpectedly, there is also a family who gets stranded in the middle of the ocean on their capsized boat after being attacked by an angry mosasaurus. These films always have children in danger (remember Jeff Goldblum’s daughter stowing away in Jurassic Park: The Lost World?) and this time it’s young Isabella Delgado (Audrina Miranda) who, along with her father (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), her older sister Theresa (Luna Blaise) and Theresa’s lazy boyfriend (David Iacono), are thrown into the mix. The two groups get separated once they land on the island and each group has run-ins with various dinosaur species, some veggie eaters, but mostly violent predators who appear when the plot needs them to be there. 

Theater Reviews: Catching Up With the Enjoyably Country-Flavored “Beau the Musical” and the Always Excellent Jean Smart in “Call Me Izzy;” Being Introduced to the Flamboyant Life of Rob Madge in “My Son’s a Queer (But What Can You Do?)”

Beau the Musical (c) Valerie Terranova Photography

Theater: Beau the Musical 
At Theater 154 

The hero of Beau the Musical, Douglas Lyons and Ethan D. Pakchar’s country-rock musical making its Off-Broadway debut in a downhome, charming Out of the Box production, is not our narrator. That would be Ace (Matt Rodin), who is performing at a club in Nashville and telling the story of how his reunion with his thought-to-be-dead grandfather Beau (Chris Blisset) led him to become a country singer. Most of the story takes place in the high school life of Ace, being raised by a loving-if-gruff single mother, Raven (Amelia Cormack). She has just started dating a likeable but trying-too-hard Larry (Matt Wolpe), who wears the best piece of tacky clothing in costume designer’s Devario D. Simmons’ lived-in collection, whom Ace can’t stand when he gets a call from a Memphis hospital that Beau is in the ICU and Raven is his emergency contact. Without a strong male figure in his life, Ace starts to bond with this man he never knew existed. Beau turns out to be no-nonsense, but also a very compassionate man, trying to coax Ace out of his shell with walks in the country, teaching him guitar and getting Ace to open up about his life. Ace is a closeted, gay kid who is being harassed and makes out with his bully Ferris (Cory Jeacoma). A lot more happens in Beau the Musical, which gives each of the band members a character to play, but at almost two hours with no intermission, the show needed a couple of plot prunings, especially the acting out of a big secret in Beau’s past that could have just been a concise monologue. The acting is the draw in Josh Rhodes’ production. Rodin is better suited here as Ace than he was in All the World’s a Stage earlier this year as a closeted teacher, and Cormack is convincing as a mother who loves and wants to strangle her son at the same time. But the heart of the show (and probably why the musical is named after him) is Blisset as Beau. Blisset may start out a gruff country stereotype, but he gets more interesting as the show goes along, especially the heart-tugging finale. Beau the Musical may focus on the trauma of family life, but it’s mostly an enjoyable and fun country-fried ride. 

GALECA Critics Bestows Dorian TV Award Noms to "Andor," "The Last of Us" and Newbie Series "Overcompensating"

Overcompensating (c) Prime Video

Los Angeles, Calif. - June 16, 2025 - Adding some Hollywood fizz to Pride month, the 560-member strong GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics announced its 16th Dorian TV Awards nominations for the best in television and streaming, mainstream to LGBTQ+ content. Voters in the organization, now the second largest entertainment journalists group in the world, write and work for some of the most respected and buzz-worthy media outlets in the U.S. and beyond. 

Vying for Best Drama: The twisty and surreal office drama Severance, seen on Apple TV+, the Disney Plus Star Wars universe spinoff Andor, and HBO/Max's ever-outrageous hotel drama The White Lotus—each of which took six Dorian nominations. Two more HBO/Max shows, the gritty new medical drama The Pitt and zombie spooker The Last of Us, are in the running with five. 

In the comedy arena, HBO/Max's Hacks—the Dorian Award winner here last year and in 2021—scored six nods, the same streamer's outgoing Somebody Somewhere grabbed four, with ABC's Abbott Elementary (another two-time Dorian winner) chalking up three. Also in the running: Apple TV+’s new, big and boisterous Hollywood satire The Studio and the second season of HBO/Max's genre-defying The Rehearsal, creator-star Nathan Fielder’s societal experiment that aims to prepare average folks for various potential, if wildly unlikely, life snags.