“Romeo and Juliet.” How could you screw it up with hot young people in the leads?

Reviews are in from last night’s Broadway opening of the Sam Gold production. Yikes. According to didtheylikeit.com, the greatest tragic romance ever told did not go over well.

Of the main reviews, six were positive, seven were mixed, and five were out and out negative. The NY Times reviews, listed as mixed, is actually pretty damning.

The Washington Post: “Unfortunately, the production’s rave-like, nihilistic drive does little to make up for its lack of clarity or a pulse.”

The Times: “If you’re confused — and even a frequent flier might be — you can consult a program insert that visualizes the Montagues and Capulets as a mood board.”

Variety: “Although the production has a heartbeat, it’s missing a heart… When he kills Tybalt in revenge, the moment is empty of real feeling. In the moments after that — when he’s exiled and so must leave his love; when he discovers Juliet is dead; etc. — there is no heartbreak at all. There’s not a wet eye in the house.”

Kit Connor, age 20, and Rachel Zegler, 23, star in the title roles. There are no other names known to anyone over 21, if that. Yet the play — cleverly marketed — is making $1 million a week so far. Will this decidedly ambivalent reaction keep the box office going? We’ll see.

If anyone can explain to me, please do:

Thornton Wilder won a Pulitzer Prize for “Our Town” in 1938, it was one of his three Pulitzers. It went on to become a staple of American theater, but sometimes we forget its powerful gut punch.

It’s impossible to forget in Kenny Leon’s slow burn production that just opened on Broadway with Jim Parsons as the stage manager leading a cast of 28 people. As he says breaking the fourth wall at the start of the play, some of those people include Katie Holmes (her best stage work ever), the eternally young Richard Thomas, Zoey Deutsch, Ephraim Sykes, and Julie Halston.

“Our Town” is a three act play, but Leon has condensed it and taken out the intermissions, which makes the thrust of the story even more powerful. In the first act we see life in Grover’s Corners, a small town where everyone knows each other going back generations. In the second, the two primary young people, George and Emily, marry, guaranteeing the future generations of Grover’s Corner.

For the first two acts, there’s a glow of nostalgia over small town Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire. Wilder wrote it in 1938 but the action takes place between 1901 and 1913. Even in 1938, people were trying to remember when America was great, a simpler time that — as you find out in act 3 — never existed. That’s because Act 3 takes place in a cemetery, where reality has set in along with the cycle of life and great tragedy. People in the audience last night were in tears by the of the play.

Plenty of good actors have played the stage manager over the years including Paul Newman, Spalding Gray and David Cromer in his own landmark production downtown in 2009. Jim Parsons, who will always be referenced as Sheldon in “The Big Bang Theory,” is astonishingly good in the role and brings out the best in the whole cast. But that’s not hard because they are each exceptional.

Broadway is brimming with wonderful productions this fall. Everyone is asking me to what to see. “The Hills of California” by Jez Butterworth, starring Laura Donnelly, is a stunner not to be missed. More on that later.