It’s a booming week on Broadway.

Sunday brought “Funny Girl” and last night “A Strange Loop” made for cutting edge material.

Tonight, Billy Crystal debuts his charming and very sweet, and funny “Mr. Saturday Night.” Who doesn’t love Billy Crystal? All his warmth and humor come out in this highly enjoyable musical. No, there is nothing “Strange” about it. Audiences are packing the Nederlander Theater to feel good and see someone they “get.” I’ll have more on this terrific show this evening.

Meantime, tomorrow night Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga open in “Macbeth.” This is a hot ticket– James Bond on stage! Plus the great Negga (already an award winning actress) is making her Broadway debut. She’s the first Black actress to play Lady Macbeth since Orson Welles’s landmark all=Black production in 1936. (Welles was always so far ahead of his time, it’s not funny.)

I’m told that it was critically important to Daniel Craig when coming back to Broadway that tickets are accessible and available to introduce theater to a new generation. So, lead producer (and Daniel’s frequent collaborator on film and theater) Barbara Broccoli and Craig worked together to create a ticket initiative called Macbeth 2022. The ticket access initiative provides opportunity for students from underserved communities in the New York area. For some of these young people, Macbeth will be their first Broadway show.

Is that all? No. “Girl from the North Country” is about to re-open for Tony consideration. This is a stunningly beautiful play with music by Bob Dylan starring Mare Winningham and Jay O. Sanders and should not be missed. I hope the Tony voters appreciate that this should have been the Best Musical of 2020.

Curtain up!

Ewwww! That’s not my critique of Paula Vogel’s tight memory play, “How I Learned to Drive”– rather the play, now having a Broadway debut after 25 years– is brilliant. It’s the people: the family.

At center, Uncle Peck and Li’l Bit (the sublime actors David Morse and Mary-Louise Parker) who originated these roles Off Broadway all those years ago. He held her in his hand as she was born, he says. He says he’s loved her every day, from that time, and when she was eleven, and he asked to unbutton her shirt as she sat on his lap. “Only if you want,” he said — and continues to say it even when he courts her with gifts and encourages her consumption of martinis. And teaches her to drive. Which becomes a structural device marking scenes but also providing a nuanced and loaded language: avoid reverse gear and idling.

That day, when Li’l Bit was eleven, was the last time she had any agency over her body. She knows it, too. She tells Uncle Peck just that, echoing the trending words of today’s “Metoo” survivors, giving the play a special poignancy. “How I Learned to Drive” traces just how easily one man’s charm can overwhelm a woman’s vulnerability, even as a mother, aunt, grandmother, grandfather note the signs of this grooming with more resignation than attention.

Johanna Day was in the original production as mother and her sister, Aunt Mary, married to Uncle Peck. Alyssa May Gold, is way too young to be a grandmother, a nice touch as much of her child bride backstory is revealed. Chris Myers plays the other male roles, including a rude classmate fixated on Li’l Bit’s bosom. If anyone has ever wondered how such transgressions occur, the stages are acted out here at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater under Mark Brokaw’s fine direction, peeled back non-chronologically, as the mind brings forward the salient painful moments.

Well, the Outer Critics Circle nominations are really Out There.

The group made itself unimportant instantly by snubbing everyone famous on Broadway, and all the hits. They totally ignored “Funny Girl” and all its elements. They pissed on Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, but gave “The Music Man” a nod for Best Revival of a Musical.

The Outers also socked it to Mary Louise Parker and David Morse for their revival of “How I Learned to Drive” but threw them a bone with a special award for coming back to Broadway 25 years after their original production.

The OCC also totally overlooked Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker in the revival of “Plaza Suite.” Not nice, kids.

“Macbeth” starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga will be considered next year, which is utterly ridiculous. And because they include off Broadway productions before they go to Broadway, shows like “Girl from the North Country” and “Strange Loop” are ineligible. This is really stupid. So you’re teling me that “Girl” is not as good as “Paradise Square” or “Mrs, Doubtfire”? Huh?

Let’s hope the Tony Awards don’t go in this direction. It will be a very lonely night at Radio City if so.