SEE IT
The latest entry in the Encores! series of neglected musicals is “Cabin in the Sky,” which in 1940 boasted an all-black cast led by Ethel Waters. Modern, overly PC souls will instinctively distrust a show for African-American performers written by an all-white team, but Vernon Duke and John Latouche’s original jazzy score is brilliant — and it’s one of the best-sung, best-danced Encores! ever. Bonus: The radiant LaChanze (“If/Then”) gets to sing gems such as “Taking a Chance on Love.” At City Center through Sunday, Feb. 14.
Stand-up Mike Birbiglia (“Sleepwalk with Me”) has honed his latest piece on the road, and it shows: “Thank God for Jokes” is incredibly effective. Yet it doesn’t feel over-rehearsed, thanks to the comedian’s laid-back demeanor — the show’s diabolically well-constructed but he looks as if he’s riffing off the top of his head. Birbiglia ponders what makes a joke funny, and when it becomes offensive — if you have to add “I’m joking!” at the end, he argues, you’ve lost the battle. Don’t expect a dry lecture, though: Birbiglia’s own cracks work. At the Lynn Redgrave Theater through March 13.
SKIP IT
“Smart People” is saying something about race and racism — but what? Lydia R. Diamond’s most clever gambit here is to frame her argument as a rom-com in which sexual and academic power moves — two of the characters teach at Harvard — play against pseudo-edgy speechifying. Joshua Jackson (TV’s “The Affair” and, yeah, “Dawson’s Creek”) is one-note as a neuroscientist trying to prove that white people are automatically racist, while Mahershala Ali (“House of Cards”) fares better as a doctor with an authority problem. But the worst part is saved for Anne Son, saddled by her role as a shrill Asian-American psychologist with a shopping habit. How ironic that a show about race would be skin-deep. At Second Stage Theatre through March 6.
In “Doubt,” John Patrick Shanley generated both suspense and empathy from uncertainty. His latest, “Prodigal Son,” is merely vague. In a program note, Shanley says that the play is an account of his time at a Catholic boarding school between 1965 and 1968. You’d think this autobiographical bent would give the show a wealth of distinctive details, but everything about it is generic, from the by-the-numbers bad-boy rebellion to the young protagonist’s (Timothée Chalamet) poetic aspirations to the teacher with a secret (Robert Sean Leonard). “Prodigal Son” flirts with big themes — religion, sexuality, feminism, literature — but never ventures beyond a light make-out session. At Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage I through March 27.