Peter Marks

For God's sake -- or maybe the devil's -- don't mess with Abigail. The look of feral resolve in Saoirse Ronan's eyes is so intense that an audience has not a moment's hesitation believing in the havoc at her fingertips in director Ivo van Hove's stunning new Broadway revival of 'The Crucible.' Her Abigail...is one of the many coups in van Hove's transfixing modern-dress production...The portrayals across the board infuse Arthur Miller's 1953 drama of vengeful mass hysteria with a stomach-knotting urgency that doesn't dissipate until well after the last of the evening's wrenching twists.

Director Walter Bobbie's production in the Cort Theatre, where the musical had its official opening Thursday night, retains the intelligently spare look of the incarnation in the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater. (It's also tauter - about 10 minutes shorter than it was in Washington.) Evoking a bucolic North Carolina of the 1920s and '40s, set designer Eugene Lee deploys a skeletal cabin on wheels as the visual centerpiece, in which the band, expertly conducted by Rob Berman, sits and strums Martin and Brickell's amiable tunes, albeit with some oddly-set lyrics. It's also worth noting that one of the biggest hands of the evening comes for the orchestra's playing of the entr'acte, the purely instrumental interlude that greets us after intermission.

Exuberance, thy musical name is 'She Loves Me'...The orchestra conducted by Paul Gemignani and the cast led by Laura Benanti, Zachary Levi and Jane Krakowski prove to be scrupulous custodians of the luscious score, and none of them more polished than Benanti. Her Amalia Balash is a worthy successor to the role's originator, Barbara Cook -- and that includes her skill at hitting that gorgeous, high B-flat in the song 'Vanilla Ice Cream.'

It is the caliber of these parodists that keeps the silliness afloat as Tony's earthquake-racked gambling vessel takes on ever more water. Butler, a star of Broadway's tongue-in-cheek 'Hairspray' and 'Xanadu,' and Pascal, the original Roger in 'Rent,' approach their stock roles with a winning élan. As dyed-in-the-mink Shirley (modeled on Shelley Winters's performance in the peerless 1972 upside-down cruise ship flick 'The Poseidon Adventure') Prince gets to show off a gift for physical comedy that becomes more formidable with the worsening of Shirley's terminal illness - a condition apparently native to the Borscht Belt. And Bart, the Carmen Ghia of Broadway's 'The Producers,' provides the vital services here of a shameless, polished clown. Best of all, though, is Simard's Sister Mary, a guitar-toting scold who cries 'shame' at her shipmates' vices while harboring a secret yearning to shout 'Blackjack!'

In Whitaker's eager-to-please though slightly pushy manner, Erie comes across as one of those fellows whose need to disclose overwhelms your ability to retreat. The intermittent nervous giggle betrays a soul of deeper insecurities than he otherwise cares to expose. And yet Erie can't help but reveal the truth of his situation, the losses and rejections he's racked up. All of this registers in the countenance of a terrific American actor, who's found a comfortable home on the stage of the Booth, when the man he plays never truly can.

In a mere 95 minutes, the playwright -- bolstered by a whip-smart director, Joe Mantello, and pitch-perfect cast of six -- delves into the dynamics of this clan with a gentleness that feels like compassion and a scrupulousness that borders on the forensic...If anything, the levels of tension and humor in 'The Humans' have been skillfully ratcheted up since the play's transfer to Broadway from Roundabout Theater Company's Laura Pels Theatre, where it had its off-Broadway New York debut last fall. The actors, encouraged by Mantello, isolate all of the warm and sore spots that unify and divide the Blakes, the affections and fissures that drive them into an ever-changing pattern of alliances.

The ecstatic noise emanating from West 45th Street may just have enough seismic force to shake foundations all the way to West 145th. It's the strength, collective and individual, of the 17 extraordinary vocal performances of 'The Color Purple' -- doubtless the best version of this 2005 musical you are ever going to hear...What remains of 'The Color Purple'...is a sleek, fast-paced treatment -- virtually a concert version -- of the journey of Erivo's heart-melting Celie...The setting seems a reflection of unvarnished Celie, who only wants out of life the simple, comforting joys of loving family and fulfilling work...There's more than enough combustibility on that stage, though, to compensate for any occasional energy deficits. And that goes treble for the dynamically emotive Erivo, who makes of Walker's heroine such an urgent life force that you're left in these troubled times with a reassuring sense that goodness really still can be its own reward.

In terms of imaginative energy, director Laurence Connor's production, with a book by 'Downtown Abbey's' Julian Fellowes and lyrics by Glenn Slater, doesn't measure up to another Broadway offering focused on hyper talented schoolchildren, Matilda... As with so many shows in this genre, 'School of Rock' suffers from an overload of brand devotedness: it doesn't cover much territory that the movie on which it is piggy-backing already did. And in important ways, it proves to be less than the sum of its filmic parts.

And just like that, Ivo van Hove cements his place irrefutably among the most revolutionary theater makers of our time. Because in its elemental economy, its flashes of uncanny insight, his revival of Arthur Miller's 'A View from the Bridge,' from London's Young Vic, is simply staggering. The story of Eddie Carbone, the proud Brooklyn longshoreman who implodes under the pressure of urges he cannot comprehend, barrels to a finish here with all of the disorienting impact of a high-velocity collision. As a result, Broadway's Lyceum Theatre, where the production had its official opening Thursday night, is a required destination for any pilgrim whose object of worship is serious drama.

'On Your Feet!,' which had its official opening Thursday night, now takes its place in the upper echelons of the jukebox genre, a club that already admitted the Tony-winning 'Jersey Boys' and the more recent Broadway hit 'Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.' None of these qualify as great art, although they make for polished commercial properties: the breakthrough of 'Jersey Boys' was in demonstrating how a clever narrative mitigates some of the form's rampant cliches. Like these earlier entries, 'On Your Feet!' is a vehicle for delivery of a vibrant songbook and yet another version of that familiar American music-business story - the rise from humble origins of an artist of extraordinary gifts, who faces formidable personal challenges but by dint of will and talent emerges triumphant.

Time will have to tell whether 'King Charles III,' despite its high entertainment value, is quite as natural a fit on Broadway. Bartlett takes a far less sentimental approach than did screenwriter/playwright Peter Morgan in the Mirren vehicles; he demands of an audience a more sophisticated understanding of how a constitutional monarchy functions, and expects us to have some intellectual curiosity about this eccentric man, nearing 70, who's been waiting his entire life to take the throne.

As for the vehicle Knightley has chosen for her Broadway debut, a confoundingly dreary adaptation of Emile Zola's steamy 1867 novel 'Therese Raquin': one is hard-pressed to find much in it of interest, or even of a marginally stirring nature.

They're softer interpretations of the roles pioneered respectively by Jonathan Groff and John Gallagher Jr. (Lea Michele was the original Wendla, Melchior's love interest.) And with supporting actors such as Camryn Manheim and Patrick Page delivering more vocally assaultive turns this time as the oppressive adults in the story, the musical's dynamic has shifted: the teens in director Michael Arden's revival seem less defiant than embattled.

The exhilaration is especially catching when it's being spread by the evening's leading man, Robert Fairchild, a star of the New York City Ballet who here impressively redirects his wattage to Broadway. His breakout performance suggests that his temporary shift in focus could, for musical-theater fans, be advantageously made permanent.

But so much of 'Side Show' goes so right, you don't mind that it still seems to be wrestling with itself, just a bit. Because you'll struggle a bit, too, as you sort out what you and the rest of the world make and made of Violet and Daisy.

The 85-minute play falls somewhere between thriller and love story, without being sufficiently filling as either; the plot keeps its numerous secrets so close to the vest that it never manages to tantalize, and its characters are too cold to develop feelings for. Jackman's character, identified only as The Man, is a robust fishing enthusiast who can't seem to land the woman of his dreams - if such a woman exists. The atmosphere of 'The River' is all. Director Ian Rickson, in concert with set designer Ultz, conjures the rustic interior of The Man's fishing retreat as dark and earthy - hauntingly beautiful, perhaps haunted. Butterworth's overwrought language, by contrast, draws too much breathless attention to itself.

The brisk and bristling 'Disgraced' confers on Broadway a quality in far too short supply: topicality. Ayad Akhtar's spiky drama...grapples with a subject as rich in dramatic possibility as it is juicy fodder for Sunday morning talk shows. Akhtar's concern here is Islam in America...As directed by Kimberly Senior, the 85-minute play...is all rhetorical sharp edges, honed by a solid cast headed by Hari Dhillon, Gretchen Mol and Josh Radnor...It's an admirably taut evening, marred slightly by a few instances of overeager performance: some shouting and gesticulating encouraged in the pumping up of the play's fireworks. Otherwise, 'Disgraced' is just what a serious theatergoer craves these days: a tough-minded inquiry that finds urgent dramatic connections in things that divide us.

A passel of well-known actors from film, stage and TV including Matthew Broderick, Stockard Channing, Megan Mullally, Rupert Grint and F. Murray Abraham cavort along with Lane in this evening of intermittent amusement -- merely lukewarm because with its slightly dated conceits, it can't decide whether to go in fully for sentimentality, satire, or the kill...And though McNally has updated the comedy's name-dropping...the breathless premise on which the comic complications hang, the outrageously eviscerating verdict of a dyspeptic New York Times critic, feels sorta kinda out of the lore of another era. Those who revel in Broadway mythology, though, will forgive the shortcomings (and drawn-out speechifying) of 'It's Only a Play' and enjoy some of the better skewering of theater archetypes.

At times, admittedly, you need a little patience with the unfolding of 'The Curious Incident.' While the piece supplies its share of touching moments - and even some outrageously sentimental ones, involving a puppy - the world it conjures is never overrun with kindly types, eager to come to the aid of a struggling young soul. That the production remains true to this rather unsparing vision is as much to its credit as is all that technical wizardry.

You wouldn't, of course, expect nonstop cartoon looniness to reign for the full 2 ½ hours of this three-act comedy; the tension in the plot is the 'surprise' visit to the Sycamores by the stodgy, patrician Kirbys, parents of ardent Tony (Fran Kranz), who wants to marry the Sycamores' 'normal' daughter, Alice (Rose Byrne). But the embrace by the Sycamores of their quirky individualism feels less than total. That seems especially true for Jones, who, in the guise of the family patriarch, proves a genial rather than compelling presence. When he expounds on his character's peculiar philosophy - why, for example, Grandpa Martin doesn't pay taxes - it isn't with the kind of conviction that helps us understand, or giggle at, the sort of quaint contrarian he is meant to be. Lovers of vintage screwball comedy - a kind of lightweight cousin of absurdism - will dig its splashy return to Broadway. Others will have to wait for a more convincing resuscitation of the genre.

Under Anna D. Shapiro's superb direction - maybe the best work of her increasingly impressive Broadway career - Cera and his co-stars mine the material for every desired laugh, every interlude of pathos. Culkin's Dennis, a repository of self-regarding bravado whose out-of-control drug-dealing has prompted his rich parents to banish him to an apartment of his own, is no less remarkable: The bullying bile he aims at Cera's cowed Warren is spewed with magnum comic impact. And Gevinson, as self-conscious Jessica Goldman, a girl so contrary she manages to turn Warren's admiration for her into something bitter, makes the acting triumph here a triumvirate. What she and Cera do with a twisting scene, built around Warren's gift to her of a sentimental item, is itself a little treasure.

As 'Act One' would have it, no love is quite so intense and tempestuous as that between a playwright and his play. In fact, in the endearing new stage adaptation of Moss Hart's memoir--long a theater world bible--any other affection revealed over the course of two and three-quarter hours in the Vivian Beaumont Theater is a pallid affair compared to the fervor of the dramatist savoring and agonizing over the reactions to his first Broadway play...And though Lapine's overlong script could use some editing, and some of the myriad supporting performances feel under-realized, his 'Act One,' which opened Thursday night, remains a warm and stimulating summation of the romance of the theater and the satisfactions of pleasing an audience.

The migrant-worker tragedy 'Of Mice and Men' may be compulsory reading in freshman English, but should it feel like homework for Broadway audiences, too?...We're meant to see in George, and his tough-love tendernesses toward Lennie, the forces of redemption at work. Except we don't see much of anything in Franco's inexpressive countenance. Poised handsomely in work clothes, he registers changes in his features barely perceptibly, as if he is waiting during the 15th take for the camera to pick up the facial nuances...O'Dowd is called on here to convey intellectual slowness in that big, conventionally physical way, with slurred speech and a slightly unfocused gaze. It's a better than serviceable performance under the circumstances; he's doubtless required to fill some of the emotional vacuum left by his co-star.

The cardinal sin in adapting a Woody Allen film comedy for the stage is forcing the funny. So the creators of 'Bullets Over Broadway the Musical,' the sledgehammering act of period-tune-driven desperation that opened Thursday night at the St. James Theatre, have a whole lot to answer for. The sinners include Allen himself... and Susan Stroman, the Tony-winning director-choreographer ('The Producers') who amps up the material in uncomfortably vulgar fashion. (Yard-long phallus, anyone, for 'The Hot Dog Song?') Except for the heretofore unheralded Nick Cordero, who plays Cheech, the goodfella with the soul of Euripides, no one emerges with a feather in their fedora. Not the hard-working Zach Braff, mugging his way through the ill-fitting role of handwringing nebbish; not the cartoonish Helene Yorke, overplaying the stock-variety floozy; not even the musical veteran Marin Mazzie, in a scenery-chewing turn as an operatically needy stage diva...

After a lukewarm stab at 'A Raisin in the Sun' a decade ago, director Kenny Leon has returned to Lorraine Hansberry's definitive story of African-American aspiration with a potent new Broadway revival starring Denzel Washington and Anika Noni Rose that reaffirms its place in the pantheon of great American drama. In his second crack at Hansberry's 1959 masterwork...Leon in concert with his cast finds the driving rhythm of bitterness that suffuses the work and in particular, the character of Walter Lee Younger. Washington is, in fact, older than Younger by a couple of decades. Nevertheless, the actor gives a sterling account of Walter Lee's careless sourness, an aura of self-defeat that renders utterly credible the decision he makes that all but scuttles the family's rise to middle class security.