Another familiar movie face, Kristin Scott Thomas, seems right at home in Ian Rickson’s production of Chekhov’s Seagull (to open on October 1 at the Walter Kerr). Scott Thomas, known for looking enigmatic and patrician in films like The English Patient, has already proved her classic stage mettle in London with arresting turns in Chekhov (The Three Sisters as well as The Seagull) and Pirandello (As You Desire Me).

I am not nervous about the first Broadway outings of Scott Thomas, Sarsgaard or, for that matter, Jeremy Piven, who will be appearing as a foulmouthed studio executive in a revival of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow (to open on October 23 at the Ethel Barrymore). No, the Hollywood celebrity I’m really worried about is that big green lug named Shrek, the animated movie hero who will be trying to effect the transition from two to three dimensions (and from speech to song) when he appears in the eponymously titled musical scheduled to open on December 14 at the Broadway Theater, to be channelled by the fine flesh-and-blood actor Brian d’Arcy James.
_BEN BRANTLEY,NYT