Elisabeth Vincentelli

Before the show even opened on Broadway last night, Mark Rylance's performance in 'Jerusalem' was generating a big buzz. We've come to expect greatness from this actor -- he was superlative in 'Boeing-Boeing' and 'La Bete' -- and once again he delivers.

Big, glitzy numbers are the toast of Broadway musicals. The only thing better? Big, glitzy numbers . . . with nuns! 'Sister Act' has plenty of both - and it's one of the season's happiest surprises. Menken evokes the lush, funky sound of Philly soul without falling into mere pastiche: 'When I Find My Baby' starts off like bedroom R&B before the lyrics take a hilarious turn. 'Take Me to Heaven' and 'Spread the Love Around' bloom into full-throttle disco epics, the latter building up to an ecstatic finale.

Indeed, 'High' has twists and revelations, but no suspense. Nobody will bat an eye upon learning about Sister Jamie's stormy past, or the reasons Father Michael is so invested in Cody's well-being. And when someone eventually makes a direct appeal to God, you think, 'What took so long?' Indeed, everything's foreshadowed with clumsy insistence. While the play clearly hits close to home for Lombardo -- who's been candid about his own faith and past drug problem -- its purple prose and potboiler flourishes could easily have come from a 1960s 'social issues' flick.

At first, the Queen seems faithful to Carroll's creation, albeit with nods to 'Evita' and Momma Rose. Then she turns out to be downright grandmotherly. What a cop-out: It's hard to care for Alice's safety if there's no real danger. This is also typical of the work's misguided approach. Who is a musical about a grown-up Alice for? This show clearly casts a wide net, but it also takes family-friendliness as a license to be simplistic. Come on, 'Wonderland,' test us -- we're smarter than you think.

Some have branded the show as sentimental. Have we become so jaded that people are called suckers for crying during a good, old-fashioned tale? 'War Horse' isn't sentimental: It's just not afraid to be emotional. Ultimately, the show succeeds because it tells children and reminds adults that some of life's joys are made great by terrible hardships.

In his Broadway debut, Chris Rock plays Ralph D., the AA sponsor of Bobby Cannavale's Jackie. They share some heavy scenes -- red-blooded, profanity-laden bouts -- but Rock is a lightweight: The more experienced, more assured Cannavale knocks him out without even trying.

'Catch Me If You Can' makes Abagnale a sympathetic figure guilty mainly of charming everybody. Tveit is handsome and sings well, but overuses his Colgate smile and lacks the pizazz necessary to sell the snake oil. This Frank is a junior, all right: many personas but little personality. Butz, on the other hand, has charisma to spare -- which is saying something, since he puts the 'ratty' back in Hanratty. His body hunched at an angle, a greasy-looking hat perched on his head, he creates a fully rounded character, and displays unfailing musical-comedy flair.

Kathleen Marshall's revival for the Roundabout, which opened on Broadway last night, is like one of those old Hollywood movies with Bette Davis as a frumpy schoolteacher: You don't really buy it, but the star's still fun to watch.

Rajiv Joseph's 'Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,' which opened last night on Broadway, blends black humor and surreal drama. Yet the comedian's portrayal of the title's big cat is so consistently understated that it becomes self-effacing. Like the show in general, it doesn't deliver on its promise.

Daniel Radcliffe is so ador able in his Broadway musical debut, you just want to pinch his cheeks. It's not just his youth -- the 'Harry Potter' star is 21 -- but the endearing amount of dedication and enthusiasm he pours into steering the new revival of 'How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.'

Told the creators of 'South Park' were making a Broadway musical, you'd naturally expect a broad, foul-mouthed, juvenile, scatological, irreverent satire. Sure enough, 'The Book of Mormon,' which opened last night, is all that - and much, much more. It's a fiendishly well-crafted, hilariously smart - or maybe smartly hilarious - song-and-dance extravaganza. The show's a hoot. The show's a hit.

Luckily, our host is such a relentlessly entertaining character that it's a real fun trip, seemingly fueled by gallons of Red Bull. Leguizamo enters by pulling hip-hop moves to the sound of James Brown's 'Sex Machine,' and comes very close to sustaining that frenetic pace for more than two hours, though the energy -- both his and ours -- flags toward the end.

So confident is “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” in its ability to ramp up the thrills that it doesn’t wait for the finale to drop the confetti — it falls a mere 30 minutes in shamelessly feel-good show won't do to entertain, from bringing theatergoers onstage to dance to lowering its singing divas from the rafters. It may look a bit ramshackle at times, but 'Priscilla' has a big, joyous heart.

Tom Stoppard's 'Arcadia' is witty, erudite and cunningly structured. David Leveaux's revival, which opened on Broadway last night, looks handsome, and its cast, including Billy Crudup and Raúl Esparza, does fine, nuanced work. But boy, is the show tedious.

The most exciting moment in 'That Championship Season' comes when Jason Patric's character, Tom, falls down a flight of stairs. For a couple of seconds, you're involved in what's happening: Wow, that was something! Is he OK? How long did he have to rehearse that stunt? And then it's right back to sleep.

Under Daniel Sullivan's sensitive direction, the cast -- including the wryly sharp Estelle Parsons and Becky Ann Baker as Margie's landlady and best friend, respectively -- gives us fully rounded characters that never fall into caricature. Indeed, the play is often very funny, but never at the expense of its ill-starred characters. It's that generosity that makes 'Good People' a good show.

Luckily, in this Roundabout revival, Lady Bracknell is played by Brian Bedford. She couldn't be in better hands. The 75-year-old star -- who also directs -- is consistently funny without resorting to camp or caricature. He's a master of the precise pause and the arched eyebrow, evoking laughter simply by dropping his voice an octave on a word. Floating onstage like a galleon in full sail (excellent costumes by Desmond Heeley), he basically plays the Gorgon straight.

A spectacular folly has just crash-landed at Lincoln Cen ter Theater. Eight years in the making, John Guare's latest play, 'A Free Man of Color,' is an ambitious, awkward, fascinating, lumbering endeavor about the mapping of America's modern physical, social and racial borders. Most of the show, directed by George C. Wolfe, is a maddening slog. But the last 30 minutes are so brilliant that you can't dismiss the whole thing.

Too bad they all feel underused. The show looks good, thanks to Gregg Barnes' colorful costumes -- the elf outfits are particularly snazzy -- and David Rockwell's evocative sets. But Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin's score, while efficient, lacks the juice they brought to the underrated 'The Wedding Singer.' Casey Nicholaw's direction and choreography are similarly restrained, and only rarely summon the inspired mayhem the show needs.

Yet Pacino has gone bigger, unnecessarily turning up the volume since the summer, and losing subtlety in the process. Looking bedraggled, his shirt half hanging from his shapeless pants, Shylock makes a pitiful figure next to the Christian establishment, haughty tormentors in crisply pressed suits and spotless spats. That Shylock would channel his humiliation and disappointment into vengeful rage is understandable, if not excusable. But does it need to be so obvious?

To watch all this live feels supremely familiar and comforting, like eating a huge ice-cream sundae topped by a mountain of whipped cream and exploding sparklers.

While Quinn starts off with cavemen, then proceeds to the Greeks, the Romans and so on, history is merely a pretext for loosely connected observations about various ethnic, religious and cultural characteristics. At least Quinn prefers gruff bafflement and old-school Brooklyn attitude to stereotype-based hostilities.

'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown' is far from perfect. But there's enough going on to see this particular glass of gazpacho as half-full.

On the surface, 'The Scottsboro Boys' is a hard sell in a Times Square dominated by escapist fluff. The show was slightly tweaked after its off-Broadway run in the spring -- to give the characters more back story and motivation -- but it hasn't been compromised, and remains grimly thought-provoking. Yet this is also a thrillingly inventive and entertaining night at the theater. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be moved. What could be more Broadway than that?

In the end, 'Rain' is as good as you want it to be. It hits all the right notes, but an imitation is still an imitation.