David Rooney

His lumbering period pieces have notched up some of the most consistently scalding reviews of any seasoned Broadway composer, but Frank Wildhorn keeps coming back, like indigestion. It would be gratifying to report that his latest musical, Wonderland, deserves a warmer welcome, but this clumsy Lewis Carroll update shuffles bland ‘80s pop imitations and third-rate show tunes to minimal effect.

It's hard to imagine how the screen version, due in December, can improve upon the thrilling experience of this stage adaptation, which is as emotionally stirring, visually arresting and compellingly told as anything on the filmmaker's resumé...overall, the presentation and writing are sentimental in the noblest possible way. It's impossible to overstate the effectiveness of Rae Smith's gorgeous design work. Its most evocative element is the torn page of a sketchbook overhead, which maps the shifting action and changing atmosphere with a mix of pencil drawings and projections.

Playing a big-hearted lug, Cannavale's performance is what holds the play together as Jackie struggles to stay off booze and keep hold of his moral compass. As its title suggests, Motherf**ker comes on with a lot of tough-talking bravado and wild profanity. Underneath that, however, it's a wistful story of a couple who have loved each other almost all their lives, but can't keep it together. Cannavale's Jackie bounces from goofy exhibitions of romantic ardor to volatile explosions to wounded-puppy vulnerability to genuine pain, always putting his own unique spin on Guirgis' virtuoso dialogue.

There's nonetheless much to savor in a production polished to a high sheen. Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman again prove themselves an ace songwriting team. Their score evokes cocktail lounges, glitzy floorshows, Rat Pack suaveness, mellow jazz and energized go-go, all wrapped up in Shaiman and Larry Blank's silky-smooth ‘60s-styled orchestrations. And Mitchell's choreography puts a vigorous period-appropriate spin on every number. As Hanratty, Butz (a Tony winner for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) does nuanced work balancing the jaded, paunchy slob with the wisecracking professional, driven in his quest to catch Frank yet plagued by the melancholy awareness that his job is his life. The boyishly handsome Tveit, who turned heads in Next to Normal, graduates to a lead role with sparkling self-assurance, strong pipes and natural charm. He makes it easy to like Frank, even if the show makes it hard to love him.

Foster has a unique comic presence. It's not intended as a slight to say there's nothing especially ladylike about her. With her loping gait and manly stance, she's no delicate flower, but her leggy physique and chameleon-like features allow her to vamp, camp and clown with equal conviction. She also has the rare distinction of striking up real chemistry with every co-star...The girl's definitely got it and this gorgeously sung, buoyantly staged show is bliss.

Williams has not given a performance this subdued in years. He commits to being part of an ensemble, never ramping up into a star turn. There's no comic shtick in his thoughtful Tiger, yet...the ripples of humor are rich and flavorful. This is not a predigested moral treatise that delivers bite-size conclusions, but a provocative and hauntingly surrealistic play from a distinctive voice.

While he doesn't quite pop as a musical-theater performer, the 'Harry Potter' star does a capable job of singing and dancing in the revival, which also stars John Larroquette, Rose Hemingway, Tammy Blanchard and the voice of Anderson Cooper.

The entire cast is terrific, and Gad and Rannells make a dynamite pair, exchanging leader and follower roles with equal conviction. Gad (a correspondent on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart) may be giving the single funniest, most endearing performance on Broadway. But Rannells is not far behind, his character's righteousness at war with his inflated ego.

There's no disputing that Leguizamo knows how to command a stage. His limber physicality and bad-boy charisma, his gift for mimicry and vocal inflection, his effortless ability to inhabit multiple characters, all make him a pro at this type of confessional memoir. He tells a punchy story...But the impression this time around is of a writer-performer going through the motions, falling back somewhat lazily on a format that has worked for him in the past, rather than stretching in new directions.

What 'Mamma Mia!' did for Abba, director Simon Phillips' stage adaptation of the 1994 Australian road movie does for a foot-tapping mega-mix that lifts primarily from '70s disco and '80s pop. There's A LOT going on. While much of it is gaudy, fabulous and funny, it's not until act two that the aggressively high-energy musical calms down enough to allow emotional investment in its characters. This comes largely via the anchoring presence of Sheldon's divine Bernadette. She's soft and vulnerable one minute, maternal the next, yet always ready to dispense an acerbic put-down. Elegant and dignified, the Australian actor could pass for Cate Blanchett's mother. Sheldon has been with the show since its earliest Sydney incarnation in 2006, which accounts for the deeply etched back-story he brings to the role.

The production is not without rewards, but for a play of this complexity to land both intellectually and emotionally, it requires a seamless ensemble of actors who really listen to one another. That's too infrequently the case with this uneven cast.

Playing against type in his Broadway debut, Kiefer Sutherland brings nervous, wiry intensity to James Daley, Tom's resentful, underachieving brother, whose ambitions were impeded by family responsibility. Cox strikes the right notes of forced bluster and creeping desperation, and Patric sneers from the sidelines as the sloppy drunk who doesn't care enough to keep up the pretense.

Following up on his masterful work earlier this season on The Merchant of Venice, Sullivan connects to the heart of each of the play's six pithy scenes in his brisk, no-nonsense direction. His scene changes are a marvel of economy, accompanied by bursts of Pogues-style Irish jigs as the masking shrinks into an iris and reopens on a new setting. One such transition -- in which designer John Lee Beatty's chic, spacious living room for Mike and Kate gives way to the shabby walls and overhead crucifix of a church hall on bingo night -- is a gorgeous stroke of stage magic that speaks volumes. The same goes for every aspect of this terrific play in what must surely be its ideal production.

Bedford unleashes a limitless arsenal of variations on dry disapproval and can do wonders with a pause or vocal fluctuation of a half-octave or so. Mulling whether Jack is worth adding to her list of eligible bachelors, Lady Bracknell's grilling of him is comedy at its most sublime. But then, Bedford's every line in this entertaining revival is a jewel.

But the visual embellishments only add another layer of self-indulgence to a play already far too intoxicated with its own cleverness in juggling heady historical rumination with low comedy. The sober reflections on America's national character come too late and too abruptly to resonate fully.

Raiding the New Line vaults for stage musical material has so far yielded a hit in 'Hairspray' and a miss in 'The Wedding Singer.' Where 'Elf,' an underpowered Broadway Christmas attraction adapted from the Will Ferrell screen comedy, falls in that commercial spectrum will depend on its holiday box-office pull. But as theatrical entertainment, it's flavorless candy.

With deepened characterizations from the park holdovers and efficient design tweaks to move the staging indoors, this is an uncommonly satisfying production of one of Shakespeare's more difficult plays.

Alex Timbers (also represented on Broadway with the historical mockumusical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson) strikes the right overstimulated note in his direction, darting from one bit of business to the next without worrying too much about the flimsy connective thread. Lag time is plugged with shameless filler like an extended balloon gag or an amusing 1950s Coronet Instructional Film on good manners, redubbed with incongruous sound effects.

While full-length stand-up acts tend to jump from place to place, Quinn and Seinfeld have worked with skill to shape the material into a fluid discourse in the manner of monologists such as Spalding Gray or Mike Daisey.

A story that might have worked as a door-slamming stage farce ends up having no reason to sing. Musicals generally require sweeping sentiments, and while Almodovar's 'Women on the Verge' has charm to burn, it lacks the emotional depth of the director's later, richer movies, or even the molten melodrama of earlier works like 'Law of Desire.'

With its high-energy ensemble and dynamic direction and choreography, this darkly provocative musical makes a fitting swan song for the duo behind 'Cabaret' and 'Chicago.'

Thanks to a U.S. political landscape that keeps hitting new heights of contentiousness whenever Christian values go up against liberal-intellectual individualism, the debate these days often resembles a dogfight. One of the distinctions of Geoffrey Nauffts' 'Next Fall' is that it considers both sides of the faith argument without sneering at either, while examining a committed gay relationship whose harmony is undermined by one partner's beliefs and the other's atheism. The play had a quieter appeal in its hit Off Broadway run last summer; the slicked-up transfer pushes harder, particularly for laughs. But it remains a moving domestic drama.

While McDonagh's previous stage works reportedly were written in a sustained burst of early-career productivity, 'Spokane' was penned following completion of his 2008 feature debut as writer-director, 'In Bruges.' It feels here as if the playwright is catering to his fans' expectations -- the gruesome flourishes and blithe violence, the lacerating dialogue and savage humor, the maniacal characters and explosive confrontations -- but in sketch form rather than a full-bodied play. All the same, many will be delighted with what he serves up.

The most atypical of Ingmar Bergman's celebrated films, 'Smiles of a Summer Night' brought ripe carnality and a delicious sense of irony to its fin-de-siecle gathering of romantically muddled Swedes. Those same intoxicating elements were translated to 'A Little Night Music,' Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's exquisite waltz-musical inspired by the film. Reviving the 1973 show, director Trevor Nunn brings a blunt, heavy hand where a glissando touch is required, but the wit and sophistication of the material are sufficient to withstand even this phlegmatic staging. A handful of magnetic leads provides further insurance against the uneven production.

As one of the characters in David Mamet's teasing faux-polemic on the subject says, 'Race is the most incendiary topic in our history.' The slender play that takes its terse title from that declaration seems hatched more out of an urge to inflame arguments easily triggered in the age of Obama than out of the need to tell this particular story or even to explore the issue with any real conclusiveness. This being Mamet, however, the dialogue is tasty, the confrontations spiky and the observations more than occasionally biting. Slick but hollow, 'Race' entertains as it unfolds, but grows increasingly wobbly as it twists its way to an unsatisfying wrap-up.