Michael Kuchwara

'Rapture,' which opened Thursday at the Roundabout's American Airlines Theatre, fits just fine into a large space, much bigger that off-Broadway's Second Stage Theatre where the production had a successful run last year. But then the bubbly, blond, multitalented Scott has one of those quirky, expansive theater personalities that can really fill a stage.

Lavin is a joy to watch, investing Ruth with an appealing kind of cranky wisdom that only grows more pronounced as the woman ages ('Collected Stories' covers a span of six years). The actress gives one of those complete, nuanced performances, capturing the woman's intellectual vigor, her wry sense of humor and her increasing physical frailty with astonishing fidelity. And Lavin's sense of timing is superb, whether delivering a joke or acerbically dissecting the work of her protegee.

The financial finagling is not as much fun as it should be in 'Enron,' a flashy yet lumbering docudrama that has arrived on Broadway trailing rave reviews from England, where maybe they take a much keener delight in all-American chicanery.

First seen in New York in 1987 with James Earl Jones, 'Fences' has now returned with an equally starry actor, Denzel Washington in the lead. Washington, last on Broadway in 2005 in a production of 'Julius Caesar,' acquits himself well in this blistering revival, directed with a sure, steady hand by Wilson veteran Kenny Leon. It's a big, bold performance in a big, bold play, rife with emotion-drenched soliloquies for its star about life, love, death and the devil.

The hypnotic Burt Bacharach beat remains undiminished some four decades after it was unleashed in 'Promises, Promises,' the 1968 musical now getting an agreeable if not altogether transporting revival on Broadway.

Among other things, 'Sondheim on Sondheim' celebrates craft and collaboration. And just how much hard work goes into writing a musical. Consider Sondheim's reworking of the opening number for 'A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,' the first Broadway show for which he wrote both music and lyrics. It took three tries to get that opening right, and the inspiration came from Jerome Robbins who pointed the composer in the correct direction. And then there is the private Sondheim — much of the new video was shot in his East Side town house and we get a peek at where the creative process starts. Plus some rather extraordinary comments about his parents — particularly his mother — with whom he had, at best, a precarious, turbulent relationship.

The musical, which opened Tuesday at the St. James Theatre, is short, some 95 minutes. Just right for an MTV generation weaned on YouTube clips and music videos. 'American Idiot,' in fact, plays like one. Wildly diverting to look it, the show has the barest wisp of a story and minimal character development. At best, its slacker guys are sketchy portraits, prototypes rather than real people.

When 'La Cage aux Folles' originally opened on Broadway in 1983, gay marriage was not on the horizon. At the time, Fierstein's book was considered groundbreaking for depicting a long-term gay relationship in all its domestic normalcy. In the nearly three decades since then, the idea of gay marriage is a reality, at least in some places. These days, Georges and Albin could be considered just another old married couple, yet their story as told in 'La Cage' could not be more timely and enjoyable.

Eric Schaeffer, who runs the Signature Theatre in Washington's Virginia suburbs, has staged the show with a minimum of fuss. The book heads toward a glum confrontation between Phillips and several of the singers, who are leaving Sun Records for more lucrative contracts with larger recording labels. Yet the gloom is dispelled quickly when 'Million Dollar Quartet' finishes up its curtain calls with high-voltage renditions of 'Hound Dog,' 'Ghost Riders in the Sky,' 'See You Later Alligator' and the appropriately titled 'Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On.' Of course, they get the cheering audience to its feet.

If you want to know why musical comedy is such a difficult art form to master, a prime example is now on display at Broadway's Lunt-Fontanne Theatre where 'The Addams Family' has fitfully burst into story and song. In attempting to give Charles Addams' macabre characters a life beyond the brilliant single-panel cartoons that appeared for years in The New Yorker, the creators of this schizophrenic musical have made them more audience friendly. But in a perverse way, they're not as much fun.

But what gives this production an unexpected boost is something not usually found in a farce — heart. That quality is supplied by Bartha, making his Broadway debut as the nervous would-be tenor. The actor is a superb farceur, at ease with the verbal complexity of the give-and-take dialogue and the physical demands of the role that have him bouncing around the stage.

The production, under the immaculate, tightly focused direction of Michael Grandage, comes from London's Donmar Warehouse, where Grandage is artistic director. Grandage allows Rothko's barbed, brutish yet often insightful comments on art to unfold with a theatrical flair that educates as well as entertains. After experiencing 'Red,' 'What do you see?' is a question audiences will be able to answer with enormous satisfaction.

There's an intense physicality to Tharp's choreography, not to mention a delight in show-biz razzle-dazzle, and both qualities are present in the dancers whose affairs of the heart are examined with astonishing theatricality. The eight marvelous leads all have distinct personalities. Right from the start, you know they are performers to be reckoned with as they take to the floor in a swank nightclub setting designed by James Youmans.

The play, which had a successful run last summer at Playwrights Horizons' small theater, is something of a risk on Broadway today. No stars. A playwright who's not well-known, although he has extensive acting credits and is artistic director of the theater company, Naked Angels. Don't let the lack of celebrity deter you. 'Next Fall' is expertly cast, enormously entertaining and even laugh-filled despite the underlying seriousness of its subject matter.

Far more interesting is the hotel's receptionist (Sam Rockwell), a peculiar man whose strangeness matches Carmichael's. Rockwell effectively channels this man, a fellow who eventually forms a bond with the one-handed guest. The actor gets his own showy monologue in the middle of this short play, which barely runs 90 minutes. But it's quirky for quirk's sake, entertaining but not really helpful in expanding the plot. Still, there is Walken to take up the slack when the weirdness threatens to spin out of control. His performance will haunt you even if the play does not.

The first Broadway revival of 'A Little Night Music,' the enchanting, moonstruck musical based on the Ingmar Bergman film 'Smiles of a Summer Night,' is a curious affair. There are some lovely moments, most of them supplied by Angela Lansbury, but too much of this adult, sophisticated show, which opened Sunday at the Walter Kerr Theatre, seems forced, boisterous and a little crude.

Book writer Joe DiPietro skillfully intertwines these stories. And with composer David Bryan (they co-wrote the lyrics), the two have managed to create a dandy original score that is as tuneful as it is theatrical, the very essence of what a Broadway musical should be. Bryan, keyboard player for Bon Jovi, has a gift for effortless melody and the orchestrations, which he co-wrote with Daryl Waters, makes the music — check out those horns — sound as if it could have first been heard in the '50s.

There are no easy answers to be found in 'Next to Normal,' a startling, emotion-drenched musical about one family's attempt to cope with mental illness. The show is an impressive achievement, a heartfelt entertainment that has found its way back to New York after an invaluable out-of-town retooling.

If you want to know why this joyous revival, which opened Tuesday at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, is so successful, you need not look any farther than the show's first-act finale. No, not its brief display of nudity, but what is happening around it. In this moment of Dionysian frenzy, creators Gerome Ragni, James Rado and Galt MacDermot have neatly encapsulated the musical's themes. As the hippie tribe chants of beads, flowers, freedom and happiness, Claude, one of show's leads, poignantly sings, 'Why do I live, why do I die, tell me where do I go, tell me why.' Director Diane Paulus has done an extraordinary job in illuminating these two conflicting ideas — the clash of spontaneity and the search for identity — ideas that pulse through much of the evening. Paulus, along with choreographer Karole Armitage, are superb guiding spirits, galvanizing an energetic, appealing cast that has gotten better and better since the Public Theater's outdoor production last year.

Reza's play is brief, barely 85 minutes, but it packs a lot into those increasingly heated exchanges. The actors have expertly tapped into Reza's sense of heightened reality, a reality reflected in the production's stylized, red-carpeted living-room set (courtesy of designer Mark Thompson) framed by a blindingly white proscenium.

The production is under the direction of Arthur Laurents, the man responsible for the musical's original book. He has done some tweaking of the star-crossed tale of Tony and Maria, but it still seems a little sketchy and slow, even with some surprising innovations. And its emotional impact is oddly muted. Not so those Robbins' dances, which grab you right from the show's Prologue and then explode periodically throughout the evening. One such detonation is the Dance at Gym when the rival gangs go head to head in a swirling, temperature-raising contest; another is 'America,' a high-kicking salute by the spirited Anita and the other Puerto Rican girls to their adopted country.

It's not often that a musical comes along that is as ambitious as it is emotional — and then succeeds on both counts. But 'Billy Elliot,' which opened Thursday at Broadway's Imperial Theatre, is an exceptional work that exemplifies what the best musicals are all about: collaboration. Everything comes together in this impressive, warmhearted adaptation of the 2000 British film about a North Country coal miner's young son who yearns to dance and join the Royal Ballet School in London.

What makes this Lincoln Center Theater revival of the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II classic enormously satisfying is the extraordinary care given to the score of what is the most hit-filled show in the R&H canon. And that's going some since the competition also includes 'Carousel,' 'The King and I' and 'Oklahoma!' The fidelity starts even before the production begins as the Beaumont floor rolls back to reveal an orchestra of 30 musicians (a staggering number in these days of pit penny-pinching) and the first notes of 'Bali Ha'i' jump-start the overture. Robert Russell Bennett's original orchestrations have never sounded so good. Immediately, the audience is in the right frame of mind to embrace the story - twin romances set against the backdrop of the Second World War. Not only romance, but racism and a sense of duty in the face of fighting - and dying - for your country permeate the tale, based on a James A. Michener novel. They are big themes, most of which are still with us today, that theatregoers in 1949 saw as current events.

This is slice-of-life theater, lovingly captured in an eclectic score by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who also serves as the show's narrator. Miranda also stars, portraying Usnavi, a sheepishly charming tour guide through this Latino 'hood. If Quiara Alegria Hudes' tale of generational conflict, new love and efforts to snag a piece of the American dream seems scattered, you don't mind its lack of focus because the hardworking actors are so appealing. The genial performers deftly inhabit set designer Anna Louizos' richly detailed tenement and street-scene setting, which has been expanded for the more technically lavish Broadway production.

Watching 'Mary Poppins,' the Disney-Cameron Mackintosh extravaganza now on view at the New Amsterdam Theatre, is a little like eating an entire box of expensive chocolates — all by yourself. You may end up feeling a bit overstuffed, but, boy, the experience will be fun. Tasty, too. This lavish stage version about the world's most blissfully competent nanny is an amalgamation of the 1964 Disney movie that made Julie Andrews a film star and the classic children's books by P.L. Travers.