Oliver!

 A

 By coincidence, the two finest musicals in New York right now are both set in the underbelly of 19^th-century London. My previous review was devoted to one of them, Sweeney Todd, which is essentially tragic with comic undertones. Oliver!, on the other hand, is basically good-natured with a touch of tragedy. Lionel Bart’s score has a super-abundance of delightful songs that, in this Encores! production, receive their due both from the orchestra and the actors. The voices, starting with 12-year-old Benjamin Pajak (The Music Man) in the title role, are superb. He stopped the show with “Where Is Love?”, as did the excellent Lilli Cooper (Mack & Mabel) as Nancy with “As Long As He Needs Me.” Raul Esparza (Company, Seared) creates an almost sympathetic Fagin, a far cry from Dickens’ creation. Tam Mutu (Moulin Rouge) is a properly menacing Bill Sikes. Julian Lerner’s Artful Dodger was more subdued than usual. Brad Oscar (The Producers) and Mary Testa (Oklahoma!) go well together as Mr. Bumble and Widow Corney. Thom Sesma (A Man of No Importance) and Rashidra Scott (Company) are fine as Mr. and Mrs. Sowerberry. Michael Siberry (INK) is a sympathetic Mr. Brownlow. One of the show’s biggest treats is its young ensemble who are triple threats with first-rate singing, acting and, especially, dancing. Lorin Latarro’s (Into the Woods) ample choreography is inventive and makes the most of the stage’s shallow performing space. David Rockwell’s (She Loves Me) efficient set places the orchestra on a platform of rough wooden beams, with a backdrop of the London skyline at night, and two stairways that get lots of use. The score sounds wonderful under the baton of Encores! musical director Mary-Mitchell Campbell. Director Lear DeBessonet (Into the Woods) shows a real affinity for this material; The future of Encores! looks promising under her artistic direction. The production runs until May 14. Running time: two hours 20 minutes including intermission.

Ink

A-

Manhattan Theatre Club is presenting the American premiere of James Graham’s (Privacy, This House) London hit with an all-new cast except for Olivier winner Bertie Carvel (Matilda: The Musical) as Rupert Murdoch. When I looked it up, I was surprised to learn that his award was for Best Supporting Actor. I had wrongly assumed that the role of Murdoch would be the lead. After seeing the play, I now understand that the play is less about Murdoch than I expected and more about the team that led The Sun in the year after Murdoch’s purchase in 1969. The role of Larry Lamb (Jonny Lee Miller; After Miss Juile, Frankenstein), the editor Murdoch hired, is at least as prominent as Murdoch’s. The first act is a worthy successor to The Front Page as a love letter to the lost heyday of newspaper publishing. The amazing set by Bunny Christie (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) features dozens of metal desks piled high and a curved back wall made of rolls of newsprint on which images are projected. The center of the stage is a smallish platform that rises from below with different settings. A tour for a new apprentice shows us the arduous process of setting and printing the paper. I wondered why there was a piano at the side of stage. I got my answer midway through the first act. As Lamb assembles his staff, the cast suddenly bursts into song and dance. The segment works so well that I found myself wishing that the creators had gone all the way and written a musical. The second act traces the newspaper’s first year and the increasingly dubious strategies Lamb pursues to fulfill his faustian promise to Murdoch to overtake The Mirror in sales. He jeopardizes the life of someone close to the paper and finally introduces a titillating Page 3. The excellent ensemble includes David Wilson Barnes, Bill Buell (Bad Habits), Andrew Durand (Head Over Heels), Eden Marryshow, Colin McPhillamy (The Ferryman), Erin Neufer (Nathan the Wise), Kevin Pariseau (The Explorers Club), Rana Roy, Michael Siberry (Junk, Six Degrees of Separation), Robert Stanton (Fuddy Mears, All in the Timing) and Tara Summers (The Hard Problem). Jonny Lee Miller (who did not appear in London) is a serious rival for Carvel at Tony time. Director Rupert Goold (King Charles III) masterfully keeps everything moving along smoothly. The play is a highly theatrical and quite entertaining work. What it is not is a deep exploration of Murdoch and his agenda. Running time: two hours 45 minutes including intermission.

Junk

B+

Lincoln Center Theater has pulled out all the stops for its production of Ayad Akhtar’s (Disgraced, The Invisible Hand) look back at the world of finance in 1985. The size of the cast — 23 — and the sleek set by John Lee Beatty with modules that pop out as needed to facilitate smooth scene changes suggest that no corners were cut here. This is appropriate to the play’s theme. Robert Merkin (Stephen Pasquale; The Bridges of Madison County, Far From Heaven), the central character, is loosely based on Michael Milken, who turned the financial world upside down with his unsentimental application of the logic of globalism to corporate America, which often made companies worth more if they were dismembered and their unprofitable manufacturing operations closed irrespective of the number of jobs lost. The play follows the attempted hostile takeover of Everson Steel by a company backed by Merkin, who has discovered that Thomas Everson, Jr. (Rick Holmes; Hapgood, Matilda) has been cooking the books to hide the fact that profits from their pharmaceutical division have been used to hide the losses of their steel mills. When Israel Peterman (Matthew Rauch), whose company Merkin has selected to acquire Everson, and Merkin meet with Everson and his lawyer Maximilian Cizik (Henry Stram; The Cruiclble), it does not go well. The not so subtle anti-Semitism of the white-shoe financial powers versus the Jews who are threatening their status quo is an underlying theme. Some of the other characters we meet are an ambitious journalist Judy Chen (Teresa Avia Lim); Merkin’s loyal attorney Raul Rivera (Matthew Saldivar; Act One, Honeymon in Vegas), Murray Lefkowitz (Ethan Phillips), an investor with a nervous wife; Jacqueline Blount (Ito Aghayere), a lawyer who plays both sides against each other; Leo Tesler (Michael Siberry; When the Rain Stops Falling), an older investor with a taste for Judy and a distaste for “junk”; Boris Pronsky (Joey Slotnick; The Front Page), a shady middleman that Merkin’s wife Amy (Miriam Silverman; A Delicate Ship) begs him not to do business with; and Giuseppe Addesso (Charlie Semine), the N.Y. district attorney who is running for mayor. Virtually every character is corrupted by money at some point along the way. The lack of anyone sympathetic to root for is a problem for me. It is basically an ensemble piece with too many characters for any of them to be developed in much depth. If you are too young to remember the rise and fall of Milken, you may learn something new. Otherwise, your level of engagement may depend on your interest in finance and the economy. There’s more here to engage the intellect than the emotions. I thought Lucy Prebble’s play Enron was far superior. Catherine Zuber’s (Oslo, The King and I) costumes befit their characters. Doug Hughes (The City of Conversation, The Father) skillfully keeps the many strands under control. Running time: two hours 20 minutes including intermission.