Elysa Gardner

Many of us have fond memories of watching Mister Rogers' Neighborhood as preschoolers. But did you know that, for some viewers, Fred Rogers' neighborly lessons held messages of social and sexual empowerment — that he was, in fact, 'the father of free love?' This is one of the more intriguing revelations in Everyday Rapture, the slight but charming revue that opened Thursday at Broadway's American Airlines Theatre.

But Washington's Troy, while vigorous and charismatic, isn't long on nuance; and in that sense it is of a piece with the staging. Directed by Kenny Leon, an experienced and astute purveyor of Wilson's work, this Fences makes the characters' struggles briskly accessible and absorbing, but doesn't always capture their depth and resonance.

Promises was hardly a dud in its first and only previous Broadway incarnation, running for more than three years and earning leading man Jerry Orbach a Tony Award. And its tuneful score includes such Burt Bacharach/Hal David favorites as the title number and I'll Never Fall in Love Again. But the songs strain to fit Neil Simon's messy book, which lurches from hokey comedy to movie-of-the-week melodrama. And this new production seems to have two main goals: to exploit contemporary audiences' taste for retro kitsch and, more nobly, to provide a vehicle for a few talented stars.

Structurally, the show doesn't strain to draw parallels between life and art. But Lapine does find connections in songs and vignettes from the shows, however diverse their source material. Sondheim's words and music are, for all their intelligence and sophistication, most striking for their emotional fidelity to his characters and the universal struggles and joys informing their disparate journeys. Thus the frustrations driving Sweeney Todd's demon barber and the gunslingers in Assassins are as eerily accessible as the romantic obsession captured in the songs Losing My Mind and Not a Day Goes By. We're reminded, too, of Sondheim's capacity for tenderness and hope: Norm Lewis' soaring Being Alive is a highlight, as is the more fragile Beautiful, a duet for Cook and Euan Morton.

Few could have predicted that American Idiot, the new adaptation of the band's massively popular, starkly disenchanted album of the same name, would be the feel-good musical of the season. But in the hands of director Michael Mayer, who also co-wrote the libretto with Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, Idiot has become just that — as well as a case study in the power of teamwork in musical theater.

Attending a performance of this La Cage, which opened Sunday at the Longacre Theatre, is a bit like spending an afternoon with an overactive but thoroughly charming child.

The plot, for anyone who cares, is a truncated, oversimplified retelling of the artists' successes and struggles with Sun, whose legendary founder, Sam Phillips, also is a character. The musicians are relegated to stereotypes: Presley is the gentle but ambitious charmer, Perkins the righteous maverick, Cash the religious family man, Lewis the boastful upstart.

Ken Ludwig's farce, which follows the backstage shenanigans at a small-time opera company's gala in 1930s Cleveland, doesn't invite subtle gestures to begin with. But director Stanley Tucci has clearly instructed his ensemble to abandon all inhibitions in the pursuit of a goofy good time.

There's talk of Nietzsche and Aeschylus, and debate over the merits of Rothko's various peers and potential new rivals. (Jackson Pollock, that other self-destructive maverick, gets a lot of attention.) As the play unfolds, Rothko is working on the murals he intended for, but ultimately withheld from, Manhattan's swank Four Seasons restaurant. This leads to much hand-wringing about the tension between commerce and art. But the most illuminating and affecting aspect of this production, imported from London's Donmar Warehouse, is Alfred Molina's performance as Rothko. Under Michael Grandage's typically crisp, smart direction, Molina brings a wry humanity to the part that transcends tortured-artist clichés.

Conceived, choreographed and directed with characteristic dynamism by Twyla Tharp, this homage features the spine-tingling arrangements of Sinatra's best-loved recordings, zestfully revived by an expert live band. Tharp's dancers, too — playing couples who grapple with that tender trap called love — mix technical prowess with a visceral punch that can be as playful as it is poignant.

If a generous spirit and the courage of one's convictions were all it took to craft a great play, then Next Fall would be Pulitzer Prize material... The characters are redolent of archetypes and clichés we've encountered too many times before. Adam, a whiny, wisecracking urbanite with hypochondriac tendencies, suggests an early Woody Allen protagonist without the self-effacing charm, and Patrick Breen's monochromatic performance hardly makes him more appealing.

But Spokane, which opened Thursday at Broadway's Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, seems more like an homage to the iconically edgy playwrights who have long inspired McDonagh, or a parody of them. Laden with obscenity, menace and wry humor, this latest effort nods to Harold Pinter and David Mamet, though it doesn't approach the brutal brilliance of their work — or McDonagh's own previous outings.

Race may be the central theme, but Mamet, who also directed, is more interested in how differences – in color, gender, ethnicity and class – foster a lack of communication and breed resentment. 'It's a complicated world, full of misunderstandings,' Lawson observes. 'That's why we have lawyers.' The line seems at once sarcastic and pedantic. Though Race can be bitingly funny, some of Lawson and Brown's comments threaten to veer into speechifying. Lawson, especially, seems at times to be venting on behalf of the playwright, whose disdain for the strictures of political correctness is well known.

Part of the problem is that the leads seem incompatible for reasons having nothing to do with skin color. It's tough to see how Montego Glover's elegant Felicia could be attracted to Chad Kimball's buffoonish Huey, who suggests a cross between an aging stand-up comic and a parody of George W. Bush in his frat-boy heyday. Glover gives Felicia an endearing sweetness and sings powerfully. But like her castmates, she's saddled with music and lyrics (the latter co-written by Bryan and DiPietro) that at best play like retreads of old R&B hits. Bryan, a founding member of Bon Jovi, also invests some songs with power-ballad melodrama.

Yorkey's open-hearted concern for all these characters is endearing, but in his zeal to fully relay their challenges, he can wax precious. It doesn't help that Tom Kitt's rock-flavored score and the orchestrations by Kitt and Michael Starobin seem more bombastic than they did when Normal was staged in a cozier venue off-Broadway last year.

Inexplicably, Rock of Ages plods on for 2½ hours, with one intermission. You're better off buying an '80s hits collection — or, to borrow a line from Journey, taking a midnight train going anywhere.

Hair is duly beloved for its scrumptious rock-candy score and for vividly capturing an indelible and pivotal moment in our history and culture. But like its very young, Vietnam-era characters, the story has more energy than focus. In the wrong hands, it can easily become a quaint, cloying mess. The new Public Theater revival, which opened Tuesday at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, not only avoids potential obstacles but finds a resonance in Hair beyond any parallels between the turbulent '60s and our own troubled times. What director Diane Paulus and her flawless cast have achieved is a testament to the indomitability and transience of youth, with all the blissful exuberance and aching poignance that entails.

Reza's scabrously funny new play, which opened Sunday at the Bernard Jacobs Theatre, is set in the home of Michael and Veronica Novak, seemingly a nice, middle-class couple. The Novaks play host to the more affluent Alan and Annette Raleigh, whose son has bashed their son's teeth in. It's not a typical social visit, but both sets of parents are determined to work out the matter civilly.

The tale of a doomed romance between the sister of a Puerto Rican gang leader and the co-founder of a posse of all-American hoodlums was pretty hot stuff when West Side Story opened on Broadway in 1957. But the key to its visceral power has always been Leonard Bernstein's score, a spine-tingling olio of jazz, Latin and classical textures and rapturous melodies that reveal as much about Tony and Maria's feelings as the wonder-struck lyrics provided by a very young Stephen Sondheim. Those elements are very much intact in the new revival that opened Thursday at the Palace Theatre. But there is a nagging self-consciousness here that clearly owes much to director Arthur Laurents. Laurents also wrote the original book and is determined that this production enhance its authenticity and fair-mindedness.

Luckily, neither original screenwriter Lee Hall's libretto nor the lyrics he wrote to accompany Elton John's unapologetically sentimental score require us to hear every word. The characters are drawn in broad strokes, with good humor but little nuance; their function is more to serve a larger message than to relay compelling idiosyncrasies.

Much has been written recently, and rightfully, about how artists influenced by contemporary pop culture have reinvigorated musical theater. But let's pause for a moment to recognize the pre-modern giants: the composers, lyricists and librettists who gave us shows in which guys and dolls fall in love and break into glorious song and dance — not to be ironic or sensational, but simply because that's where their stories and emotions carry them. Those stories can pack more complexity and resonance than they get credit for, as we're reminded by Lincoln Center Theater's gorgeous revival of South Pacific, which opened Thursday at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre.

But for all its youthful energy, Heights is ultimately a sentimental journey, and a safe one. True, its outcome is less predictable or hokey than the too-neatly constructed first act would suggest, but Quiara Alegria Hudes' book is no more clever or daring than that of your average Disney screen adaptation. More crucially, Miranda's score is short on the melodic punch that's a vital element of any memorable musical. However well Alex Lacamoire and Bill Sherman's zesty arrangements and orchestrations serve them, his songs are at best showcases for the rhythmic and harmonic savvy of the cast, and at worst banal vehicles for the empty, American Idol-style showboating increasingly embraced on Broadway.

In following its working-class heroes as they climb the ladder up to fortune and fame, Boys offers a familiar blend of self-conscious populism and knee-jerk sentimentality. Luckily, co-librettists Rick Elice and veteran film and TV writer Marshall Brickman — whose previous collaborators include Woody Allen, Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett — manage to mitigate the muck with flashes of easygoing wit. Director Des McAnuff, who cut his rock 'n' roll teeth overseeing the Broadway debut of The Who's Tommy, also helps keep the proceedings brisk and breezy. Scenic designer Klara Zieglerova fashions a whimsical tone, with campy period cartoons projected on screens.

It's too soon to tell whether Schwartz's score for Wicked, which opened Thursday at the Gershwin Theatre, will prove as enduring. But it's safe to say that this is the most complete, and completely satisfying, new musical I've come across in a long time. The triumph is not Schwartz's alone. Adapted from a Gregory Maguire novel, Wicked offers a post-feminist, socially conscious reinterpretation of the story of Oz's Wicked Witch of the West. Though that may sound like a recipe for pretentious pedantry, writer Winnie Holzman, whose TV credits include thirtysomething and My So-Called Life, provides a libretto that juggles winning irreverence with thoughtfulness and heart.