Ben Brantley

It takes a team of strong but sensitive puppeteers to bring Joey, a half-Thoroughbred who is sold into a World War I cavalry regiment, to life-size life. And it is how Joey is summoned into being, along with an assortment of other animals, that gives this production its ineffably theatrical magic...it's Joey and the mighty Topthorn who have the most complete personalities and who keep us watching as the plot plods on.

This is by far the most accomplished and affecting work from the gifted Mr. Guirgis, a prolific and erratic chronicler of marginal lives ('Jesus Hopped the ‘A' Train,' 'Our Lady of 121st Street')...The characters portrayed by a marvelous, intensely focused five-member ensemble - including the stand-up comic Chris Rock, in a solid Broadway debut, and a blazingly good Bobby Cannavale - are always striving for a mot juste to explain their less than clear-cut feelings. That Jackie's emotions, like those of everyone in 'Hat,' are a muddle doesn't mean that they don't burn clear, or bright enough to scorch.

The script also draws blunt parallel lines between Frank, the pursued, and Carl, the pursuer, a work-obsessed loner. They turn out to have a lot more in common than you might suspect (except that you do, from the beginning), and they are each dutifully given songs to explain how and why. The flashy musical numbers definitely emerge from the plot, just as they are supposed to do in your basic organic musical, but they sometimes have the chalky flavor of audio-visual aids. The notion of Frank as a little boy lost limits the performance of Mr. Tveit, who was terrific as the mother-haunting son in 'Next to Normal.' He has intense presence, for sure, and a bright, blasting voice (though it belongs more to the age of 'American Idol' than 'American Bandstand'). But his performance is ultimately one-note, all shine and no shadows.

Both goofy and sexy, shruggingly insouciant and rigorously polished, Ms. Foster's performance embodies the essence of escapist entertainment in the 1930s, when hard times called for bold smiles, tough wisecracks and defiant fantasies of over-the-top opulence...Her pleasure in her material creates a sheen that illuminates everyone around her. Mr. Donnell, Mr. Grey and Mr. Godley are never better than in their duets with Ms. Foster, energetic competitions in putting over some of Porter's cleverest lyrics.

That makes Mr. Radcliffe the only reason to see the show, and contrary to what the title suggests, this young actor really, really tries. (He even does a somersault and lets himself be passed through the air for a football fantasy sequence.) His effortful performance is sure to stir maternal instincts among women of all ages (and probably some men too) and comradely protectiveness among his fans. And - who knows? - perhaps with time this game, engaged performer will come up with a real character to play here. Meanwhile, when he leads the show's big finale, the satirical rouser 'Brotherhood of Man,' you can be forgiven for thinking it might better be titled 'Brotherhood of Manikins.'

This is to all the doubters and deniers out there, the ones who say that heaven on Broadway does not exist, that it's only some myth our ancestors dreamed up. I am here to report that a newborn, old-fashioned, pleasure-giving musical has arrived at the Eugene O'Neill Theater, the kind our grandparents told us left them walking on air if not on water. So hie thee hence, nonbelievers (and believers too), to 'The Book of Mormon,' and feast upon its sweetness.

Although many truly witty, intellectually detailed considerations of languages and landscapes and thermodynamics are developed, they wouldn’t be much more than parlor games without the sensual, mutually appreciative energy that these performers exchange. In this “Arcadia” “wanting to know” gloriously becomes a full-blown, red-blooded appetite.

Given the participation of this director and this all-male cast, I was looking forward to “Season” as a sort of Mametian testosterone bath. At some point, though, I realized that it wasn’t a play by Mamet that “Season” recalled, but “The Boys in the Band,” Mart Crowley’s 1968 drama of unhappy homosexuals. I mean, think about it. Both plays present an ostensibly supportive group of friends who, over the course of many drinks, turn on one another and segue into anguished confessions. Heck, there’s even an “I dare you to make that call” telephone scene in both plays. And each ends with characters revealing their profound discontent with their existential conditions. In “Boys,” of course, that’s being gay. The boys of “Season” are afflicted by the disease of being American, and as this play ponderously presents it, there’s no cure in sight.

Embodied with an ideal balance of expertise and empathy by Frances McDormand, Margie (as her friends call her, using a hard “g”) is the not-quite heroine of David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Good People,” the very fine new play that opened Thursday night at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater. And discovering how Margie operates — and where she’s coming from — is one of the more subtly surprising treats of this theater season.

Eclecticism has always been essential to Mr. Guare's writing, which at its best juggles mismatched elements of culture, high and low, with daring and dizzying skill. This is the man who memorably combined tabloid prurience (and famous-name dropping) with classic poetic lyricism... But here, in his first new play on Broadway in 18 years, he seems less to be juggling than tossing bright balls of allusion and information onto the stage and praying that they'll land in a coherent pattern.

Giving what promise to be the performances of this season, Lily Rabe, as Portia the heiress, and Al Pacino, as Shylock the usurer, invest the much-parsed trial scene of this fascinating, irksome work with a passion and an anger that purge it of preconceptions. You may find yourself trembling, as one often does when something scary and baffling starts to make sense. At the same time you’re likely to have trouble figuring out exactly where your sympathies lie. For at this moment everybody hurts.

Ms. Scott, Ms. LuPone and Mr. Mitchell, marvelous though they have all been elsewhere, here seem to be preoccupied with other matters, like where they'll be having dinner after the show. In that sense, I identified with them completely.

Ms. Redgrave plays the title character, and Mr. Jones her chauffeur, in David Esbjornson's revival of Alfred Uhry's 1987 play. If the production's stars feel squeezed or confined by what is a very slender work, they never let on. They give responsible, intelligent performances that are infused with two old pros' joy in the mastery of their craft. And they pull off the deft trick of registering as big as we want them to be without making the play in which they appear seem even smaller than it is.

In the bombastic, flatulent title role of David Hirson's play 'La Bête,' which has its own problems with uncontrolled gas, Mr. Rylance delivers a comic performance of such polished crudeness that it easily ranks with his Tony-winning tour-de-farce in 'Boeing-Boeing' of two years ago. In that production (which, like 'La Bête,' was directed by the inventive Matthew Warchus), Mr. Rylance portrayed a classically passive, put-upon patsy, the innocent rube to whom wild and crazy things happen.

Unlike other rock musicals in Midtown, including 'American Idiot' and 'Memphis,' this one doesn't deliver big, clean, throbbing emotions. Irony is woven into its fabric, but it's not the easy irony of mock news shows on television. Mr. Friedman's songs, cast in the hip but anguished mode of bands like Dashboard Confessional, could be described as post-ironic. They're achingly sincere, even as they send up aching sincerity, hot and cool in one breath.

But such scenes here lack the precision timing that would make them seriously funny. And the sight-gag scenery they require - to evoke a low-budget theater's representation of a lifeboat at sea or the barricades of the French revolution - adds extra bulk to what is already ponderous.

The delightful surprise of the generally less-than-delightful 'Mrs. Warren's Profession,' which opened on Sunday night at the American Airlines Theater, is that Cherry Jones, in the title role, does not nearly glow. She glitters.

Oliver's scenes with Lyon and Helen tremble with a yearning and awkwardness, infused with a crippling class consciousness and a subliminal eroticism that dare not identify itself. In those moments 'The Pitmen Painters' stops being an 'on the one hand/ on the other hand' lecture; it becomes excitingly ambiguous, in-the-moment theater, as rich and intriguing as Art (as we are told here) is meant to be.

I first saw this 'Brief Encounter' in London two years ago, and then again when the production came to St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn last winter. I always remember it as a delicate, whimsical creation, and worry that it might not thrive in a new environment. Yet it consistently proves sturdier and smarter than I have allowed it to be. And the current incarnation, which arrives courtesy of the Roundabout Theater Company, feels to me richer than ever. It has also been altered, ever so slightly, with the aim of seducing a Broadway audience, which likes to leave a show feeling roused and exhilarated.

Ms. Mazzie, whose roles on Broadway include leads in “Kiss Me, Kate” and “Ragtime,” is, on her own terms, an equally strong presence. But even playing the mercurial diva in “Kate,” she has never seemed touched by the sort of temperament that could run away with her. She has always registered as a woman who is, on some level, practical and in control — of herself, if not her situation. If you were casting “Hamlet,” she’d be an automatic Gertrude but not a natural Ophelia.

Her wide-eyed manner, equal parts sexiness and sincerity, could be said to be faux-naïf. But know that there’s nothing cynical about the faux part; it’s a style choice that lets Ms. Scott perform with the sophistication that a New York audience (or rather an audience of New Yorkers) demands. And there’s no denying that when she sings, from a wildly diverse song list, she’s as polished and inventive as the worldliest cabaret artist. Having spent many nights on Broadway stages, she has no difficulty scaling up cabaret intimacy for a house as large as the American Airlines Theater; Ms. Scott naturally translates life size into bigger than life.

But Troy’s interactions with Rose are what give “Fences” its moments of genuine glory. Ms. Davis, who won a Tony for her performance in Wilson’s “King Hedley II,” may well pick up another for her work here. Her face is a poignant paradox, both bone-tired and suffused with sensual radiance. Rose has resigned herself to her life in a way Troy cannot, but that doesn’t mean there’s not passionate yearning within. What Troy rants about, Rose keeps to herself, and Ms. Davis draws extraordinary power from that reticence; you never feel that Rose is any less deep than her husband. You can sense, so palpably that it hurts, why Troy and Rose were meant to be together, and when it looked as if the marriage might be going south at the performance I attended, you could hear horrified gasps in the audience. Mr. Washington and Ms. Davis prove that lovers don’t have to be as young and star-crossed as Romeo and Juliet to generate shiver-making heat and pathos.

Even that singing sparkplug Kristin Chenoweth, who stars opposite a charming Sean Hayes in his Broadway debut, seems to feel the prevailing lassitude. “Promises, Promises,” which features a book by Neil Simon and songs by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, comes fully to life only briefly, at the beginning of its second act, when a comic volcano named Katie Finneran erupts into molten hilarity. Otherwise the white-hot charms this musical is said to have once possessed are left sleeping.

In the world of American musicals he is indisputably the best, brightest and most influential talent to emerge during the last half-century. Even when his shows have been commercial flops, they are studied, revered and eventually reincarnated to critical hosannas. No other songwriter to date has challenged his eminence, and it seems unlikely that anyone will in his lifetime. It is even possible, if sadly so, that he may be remembered as the last of the giants in a genre that flourished in the 20th century and wilted in the 21st. But such brooding thoughts have little place in a discussion of “Sondheim on Sondheim,” which opened Thursday night. This is a chipper, haphazard anthology show that blends live performance of Sondheim songs with archival video footage and taped interviews with Himself. Conceived and directed by James Lapine, Mr. Sondheim’s frequent (and, to me, best) collaborator over the years, this somewhat jittery production never quite finds a sustained tone, a natural rhythm or even a logical sense of sequence.

What makes this version work — transforming a less-than-great musical into greatly affecting entertainment — is its insistence on the saving graces of the characters’ illusions about themselves and, by extension, the illusions of the production in which they appear. As presented here “La Cage” is (you should pardon the expression) a fairy tale, a sweet, corny story that asks us to take people (the good-hearted ones, anyway) at their own valuation. Try to see it their way, the show suggests; squint hard, and life at this dump will appear, for a second, beautiful. The old-fashioned, feel-good musical (which “La Cage” defiantly is, for better or worse) has always demanded such leaps of faith from its audience. Mr. Johnson’s interpretation coaxes a parallel between the willful make-believe happening onstage and our willingness to subscribe to it. The show’s very plot, we come to realize, is the triumph of musical-theater logic over reality.