Don Aucoin

Much of the credit for that goes to Craig Allen Smith. He plays Daniel Hillard, an out-of-work actor who disguises himself as a Scottish nanny so he can remain close to his three kids after his divorce from their mother. Complications inevitably ensue, the wheels come off his double life, and Daniel learns a bit about parenthood and marriage along the way.

Directed by Jessica Stone, the touring production of 'Kimberly Akimbo' that has arrived at the Emerson Colonial Theatre is funny and heart-piercing by turns, managing to both entertain and move us, and generally achieve an emotional richness that, crucially, stops short of mawkishness.

Shankman’s approach at the Opera House is anything but blasé. A belter par excellence, she delivers the kind of full-throttle performance that captures Fanny’s outsize personality. In the show’s Act One closer, “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” Shankman virtually rattles the theater’s rafters.

Ashford overdoes the atmospherics; when a heavily symbolic storm arrives late in the play, it rumbles and crashes like something out of 'Wuthering Heights.' The Pollitt household, designed by Christopher Oram, is enclosed by giant, creamy, billowing curtains. At center stage is a king-size bed, looming like an exclamation point over Brick's refusal to sleep with Maggie.

The plodding pace, greatest-hits superficiality, and hagiographic tone of “Magic/Bird’’ feels jarringly dated, especially at a time when ESPN’s “30 for 30’’ documentary series has shown what provocative stories can be found and told by those willing to probe beneath the myths that surround sports icons. Instead, “Magic/Bird’’ floats along the surface, giving off a strong whiff of authorized biography.

Now that the far-from-happy dust has settled from Stephen Sondheim’s preemptive broadside, now that the American Repertory Theater production of “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess’’ has finally arrived on Broadway, it can be seen, and gloriously heard, for what it is: a fully realized work that pays homage to a classic while infusing it with new, thrilling life.