Peter Marks

Featuring Jesse Williams as a superstar center fielder who comes roaring out of the closet, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson as a goofy, white-collar guy already out and newly turned on by the game, the comedy-drama has been buffed to a scintillating sheen by director Scott Ellis and his lineup of pro designers. They ensure Greenberg’s wit steps up winningly to the plate for the revival that marked its official opening Monday night at the Hayes Theatre.

That sordid history would not seem to have foretold a jukebox musical devoted to the upside of Jackson's genius - and certainly not by artists of the caliber of two-time Pulitzer winner Nottage ('Ruined,' 'Sweat') and the celebrated ballet world fixture Wheeldon. The show's decidedly selective memory may be off-putting to theatergoers appalled by the stories of Jackson's alleged misdeeds. Nevertheless, the creative team's painstaking work has resulted in a riveting, adrenaline rush of a show, propelled by remarkable dancing and a mesmerizing central performance by Myles Frost as the sleek, soft-spoken pop megastar.

Long-winded and impossibly earnest, the world-premiere musical, which marked its official opening Monday night at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, features an unremarkable score by Tom Kitt and Michael Korie and a lumbering book by James Lapine, who also directs. Their account is of the unlikely if actual acquaintanceship of movie star Cary Grant with writers Clare Boothe Luce, Aldous Huxley and Gerald Heard - and how they got together in Southern California in the mid-1950s to drop acid.

The highs are so high in director Marianne Elliott's gender-reversed 'Company' that a Sondheim freak like me can live with aspects that don't quite hit those lofty heights. We'll get to those, but first, let's dwell for a spell on the joys of a Broadway revival that had its official opening Thursday at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre - pleasures that make this production a moving, and deeply funny, living memorial to the late Stephen Sondheim.

Audiences that want to indulge Broadway's penchant for recycling hit movie scripts with an insert-song- here sensibility could do a lot worse than 'Mrs. Doubtfire'; Broadway has repeatedly shown that it can - do worse, that is. (See 'Pretty Woman,' 'Ghost,' 'Sister Act,' etc.) The pop score by Wayne Kirkpatrick and Karey Kirkpatrick evinces some cleverness, especially in a mock-flamenco number, 'He Lied to Me,' performed in the Spanish restaurant where McClure executes nifty quick changes of Catherine Zuber's smart costumes.

What melts away as you get to know the characters are the monumental stigmas attached to jail time. Donovan's Jason is inked to the max with prison tats, some of them racist symbols, but the story behind them reveals something unexpected. Letitia, here called Tish, in Young's smashingly vibrant turn, is all adolescent energy and adult anxiety, the latter brought on as a single mother caring for a sick child. Salazar's hyper Rafael needs an emotional home for his nurturing instincts, as an alternative to his weakness for drugs.

Devoid of insight and ricocheting between dull vulgarity and vacuous hero worship, the show, which had its official opening Wednesday at the Longacre Theatre, is less edifying than a scroll through the archives of the tabloids. The musical purports to ridicule them for hounding their prey, but in actuality matches them for exploitation.

If you're looking for a sleek, swift and superbly sung evening to take you out of yourself, the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, where the musical marked its official opening Sunday, fits ideally in your itinerary. At times, the vibe becomes so contagious that it may float you out of your very seat.

The magnetic Hill and Smallwood infuse Moses and Kitch with exuberant physicality; though they create distinct characters, the ineffable, mutual dependence they conjure is their chief accomplishment. Ebert applies a freewheeling buffoonery to Mister and, later, an opposite dimension of cruel menace to his other role, a policeman who under stress will undergo a dramatic conversion.

An American trail ends at a Depression-era boardinghouse in Duluth, Minn., where a cross-section of desperate Midwesterners washes up. Foreclosure, bankruptcy, impoverishment and a god of false hopes are all beating down the door. Yet in 'Girl From the North Country,' the spiritually rousing musical that marked its official Broadway opening Thursday at the Belasco Theatre, these '30s horsemen of the apocalypse never get us down. Enveloped in the moving lyricism of Bob Dylan's songbook, the show is akin to a poem of uplift - an ode to fellowship forged in adversity. A roomful of gorgeous melodies performed on a landscape of diminishing returns.

'Jagged Little Pill,' the humorlessly banal new musical fashioned out of Alanis Morissette's agonized songbook, belongs to that burgeoning category of musical theater that cynically imagines any cycle of pop melodies can be repurposed for Broadway with the addition of a serviceable story.

The 100-minute performance is a pretty stripped-down affair, and yet it is consistently eye- as well as ear-filling. Byrne and his 11 musician-cohorts, all dressed in identical, monochromatic gray, are the entirety of the stage furnishings, their bare feet signaling a serendipity and lack of pretense. (Rob Sinclair's gorgeous lighting design is a particular enhancing factor.) 'Us and you: That's what this show is,' Byrne declares at one point, explaining how he sought a production with as few artificial barriers as possible between the instrumentalists and the audience.

It's in that persuasive finale, devoted to the tormented exasperation of Kalukango's sublimely rendered Kaneisha, that we get the stunning truth of what her character is after - and that only Nolan's expertly, intuitively constructed Jim can help her through. It is, in a cosmic sense, what 'Slave Play' is after, too. I cannot reveal to you what that catharsis is. I can just tell you that 'Slave Play' delivered one to me - and in the process opened my eyes and ears more fully, and gratefully.

The hallmark of a truly inspired stage actor may not be what he or she does with outstanding material, but what they can accomplish with the run-of-the-mill stuff. By that measure, a sustained ovation is due Jake Gyllenhaal for his yeoman work in 'Sea Wall/A Life,' a pair of rather humdrum monologues by British playwrights Simon Stephens and Nick Payne that made it to Broadway - chiefly, it appears, because the popular Gyllenhaal is in one of them.

The antic unconventionality of director Baz Luhrmann's 2001 pop phenomenon 'Moulin Rouge!' has been transformed into an eye-and-ear-pleasing - and altogether conventional - Broadway musical. With a glorious set by Derek McLane, more than 70 pop songs, and dynamic lead performances from Karen Olivo and Aaron Tveit, the show is engineered for an evening of easily digested diversions.

So here comes another, focused yet again on Murdoch and the transformational effect he's had on how people consume the news in the modern age, on both sides of the Atlantic. 'Ink' it is called, an engrossing, richly detailed play that had its official opening Wednesday at Manhattan Theatre Club's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. It stars the magnetic Jonny Lee Miller as an editor converted rabidly to tabloid sensationalism and Bertie Carvel of 'Matilda'-the-musical fame as Murdoch, learning in the late '60s how to tack to the coordinates of readers' baser instincts.

This embraceably funny concoction goes by the title of 'Tootsie,' which also was the title of its eternally endearing 1982 film source, starring Dustin Hoffman as a temperamental actor so desperate for a part he disguises himself as a woman to get it. The mantle of Michael Dorsey/Dorothy Michaels has been passed down on this occasion to the sublime Santino Fontana, who not only gets to strut his farcical stuff, but also sings, amazingly well, in two registers.

It's not an epic political tale that Hnath outlines in 'Hillary and Clinton,' which had its official opening Thursday at Broadway's Golden Theatre. Rather, in 80 muscular minutes, Hnath, author of the trenchant 'A Doll's House, Part 2' - another marriage play - is providing a mere snapshot. But in that fleeting picture, he embeds a persuasive case for the codependency that rules them both, one that allows their partnership to survive, even in the aftermath of embarrassing, even humiliating, disclosures.

Without a bona fide star role like Lilli, though, you might be hard-pressed to put up with some of the hoarier aspects of 'Kiss Me, Kate's' sexual politics, in Sam and Bella Spewack's book. But Lilli's backbone, bolstered through the nimble tweaking of play doctor Green, serves to keep the cringe factor at bay. There is that creamy O'Hara coloratura, too, to sing us all into happy submission and apply to this revival an apropos adjective: unmissable.

I couldn't be less chill, not after sitting through the insipid 'Be More Chill' for the second time. I saw it last year off-Broadway, a perch on which it landed by virtue of the mad crush many young folk developed for a cast recording that streamed online long before a New York engagement was ever in the works. It is, in that sense, the first musical to click its way onto Broadway, where it had its official opening at the Lyceum Theatre on Sunday. And, boy, were my misgivings from my initial encounter confirmed. 'Be More Shrill' would be a better title for director Stephen Brackett's heinously overamplified and overacted production, built on the story of a nerd played by the intrepid Will Roland, who takes a magic pill to become popular with the high school 'in' crowd.

As a portrait of a vengeance-obsessed culture drowning in its own spilled blood, 'The Ferryman' is a searing social document. As a sprawling human drama, poised on the precipice of a violence that you know is waiting for its beguilingly drawn and assayed characters, it is a riveting work of art. It sprawls, too, in the most exhilarating sense of the term. Jez Butterworth's revenge tragedy, which marked its official opening Sunday night at Broadway's Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, teems with people and the events that divide and imperil them.

This elaborate two-part, 5½ -hour stage sequel to J.K Rowling's canonical series is like a witchy worship service for the countless consumers of every magical segue and subplot of the seven books and eight Harry Potter movies from which it draws inspiration. During the full day of performances I attended in the Lyric Theatre - refurbished as part of the production's reported $68 million, pre-opening budget - roars and applause broke out for the entrances not of star actors, but of familiar supporting characters like Albus Dumbledore, Severus Snape and Dolores Umbridge. If that is any indication of a devotional intensity waiting to be tapped, this deft homage will be inducing swoons in Times Square for years to come.

And yes, for sure, 'Mean Girls' is a chronicle on the superficial side: Some lip service is paid to the evils of bullying, but the evening is pure sendup. That it's a showcase for so many gifted young comic actresses is no ­minor blessing; and the guys, like Kyle Selig, as the requisite dreamboat, and Cheech Manohar, as the geeky showboat, are strong assets, too. Visual panache is supplied by Gregg Barnes's drop-dead costumes and the graphics-driven backdrops by Finn Ross and Adam Young. Best of all, in a marketplace filled with mindless work about teens, here's one that doesn't insult their intelligence - or yours.

Winning over the uninitiated, though, may be a tougher task for the eagerly anticipated musical that had its official opening Thursday night at the St. James Theatre. What may prevent 'Frozen' from appealing to more sophisticated theater crowds is the unfulfilled promise of the plot. We're teased in this venture with the idea of an animated story wrought in three dimensions with more psychological subtlety than is the custom in Disney musicals. Because 'Frozen' attempts to traverse the tender and intimate terrain of trauma and loss of love. But it never achieves that necessary climax - paradoxical in a show of this title - when a spectator's heart is able to melt.

Yes, Jimmy Buffett, it's your own damn fault. Oh, I know, you had help in the commission of 'Escape to Margaritaville,' the lamely antiseptic musical that had its official Broadway opening Thursday night at the Marquis Theatre. But it's your songs that book writers Greg Garcia and Mike O'Malley have spun into this insufferably dumb show, about a beach bum guitarist who falls for an environmental scientist while his bartender buddy suffers flashbacks filled with tap-dancing life insurance agents. (Yup, you read that right.)