Robert Hofler

What keeps 'SpongeBob' afloat are the original songs by Sara Bareilles, Cyndi Lauper, John Legend and others. They range from gospel lite to ersatz heavy metal, and a few capture the infectious bounce of Joe Raposo's tunes for the early episodes of 'Sesame Street.'

Once on This Island' captures Ahrens and Flaherty at their most intimate and therefore their most effective, before they went on to such questionable projects as 'Seussical' and the current 'Anastasia' and what is arguably the most ponderous musical ever brought to Broadway, 'Ragtime.'

It's not that Thurman doesn't know what to do with her hands, in the awkward manner of some film actors who ill-advisedly act on stage. It's that her gestures seem to be completely programmed. She's a little less calculated with her head tilts and line readings, but the effort shows. And that's the last thing a play about political manipulation needs.

Steve Martin has taken what might have made a good story for one of his New Yorker 'Shouts & Murmurs' columns and turned it into a full-length play for Broadway - assuming you consider 80 minutes full-length. 'Meteor Shower,' which opened Wednesday at the Booth Theatre, would be consistently hilarious if the comedy could be watched in the time it takes to read one of his New Yorker columns. The other 60 or so minutes of Martin's new play is little more than set-up and filler, often repeated.

Seeing it today, you have to roll up the nearest Playbill and scratch your head in wonderment at why the talented writer of 'Disgraced' bothered with a subject that movies from 'Margin Call' to 'Wolf of Wall Street' to 'The Big Short' have handled so much more effectively in recent years. Even a far weaker effort, like Oliver Stone's 'Wall Street,' had the advantage of a timely release date: December 1987.

The clunky segues between numbers aside, 'Prince of Broadway' most resembles a Met Opera gala, where one singer after another comes out in full costume to deliver a big aria. 'Prince of Broadway' goes for that same wow factor, with everybody trying to outdo each other. Unlike the greatest hits of opera, though some of these Broadway tunes have been turned into anthems that are merely loud and bombastic, and these include the title songs from 'Kiss of the Spider Woman' and 'The Phantom of the Opera,' as well as 'This Is Not Over Yet' from 'Parade.'

Fine. But what does this musical have to say? Now 89, Prince has had a storied career, but we don't get that story here. Beyond his penchant for unconventional material, there's little insight into Prince's craft or his vision. It's not easy to detect the director's history in what we're seeing, since the musical numbers-greatest hits from shows including West Side Story, Sweeney Todd, Company and Cabaret, plus a sprinkling of relative obscurities-feature new casts, new choreography (by codirector Susan Stroman) and new sets (by Beowulf Boritt, making budget-conscious nods to the originals). The songs wind up in an awkward space: divorced from the dramatic context that gave many of them their power, yet too tethered to their first incarnations to enjoy the interpretive mobility they might have in a straightforward concert or cabaret show.

The highest praise you can give playwright Lucas Hnath is that he should now write a sequel to 'A Streetcar Named Desire.' He's up to the task, as evidenced by his arresting new comedy, 'A Doll's House, Part 2,' which opened Wednesday at the Golden Theatre.

The good news on the Broadway revival of 'Six Degrees of Separation' is great news. Twenty-seven years after the debut of John Guare's comedy of manners and mores in Manhattan, 'Six Degrees' retains its place as one of the great American plays of the late 20th century. The revival, which opened Tuesday at the Barrymore Theatre, also is a reminder of a time in the theater when two- and three-hander dramas did not dominate the nonprofit world. True, Lincoln Center Theater, which originally produced the Guare play, is now staging a new American drama, 'Oslo,' with a cast of 18. The cast of 18 in 'Six Degrees' is especially astounding because it is possible to imagine the play with just its three principal characters: Ouisa and Flan Kittredge, the art-dealer couple living on the Upper East Side in 1990, and the young black man Paul, who is the alleged son of Sidney Poitier.

Terrence McNally's book goes through so many contortions on the subject of Anastasia. She is the royal daughter. She isn't the daughter. She is, then she isn't again. But then why does this Russian girl know so much about the Romanovs' pet cat and why is there a diamond the size of the Ritz sewn into her rag of an overcoat? Also unexplained is where Anya/Anastasia learned to jump from trains a la Tom Cruise and defend herself (and her boyfriend) by kicking men in the nuts. No Disney princess ever did that before! As the two lovers, Christy Altomare and Derek Klena display pretty singing voices, and otherwise show as much depth as the animated-film characters their roles are based on.

In my nearly half century of Broadway theatergoing, I've never witnessed such a second-act reversal of fortune as what's going on now at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, where 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' opened Sunday. Only in retrospective can you see glimmers of hope in the musical's desultory first half. Just one song by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman hits the mark in this retelling of Roald Dahl's tale of four children who win golden tickets to Willy Wonka's long-shuttered chocolate factory.

I'm a total sucker for plays, movies and books about little known events that completely shake up our sense of history...Lesbian love was glorified in a popular Yiddish play in the early 20th century? Vogel tells her complicated, sprawling story with urgent economy. She uses the rain scene, enacted by Katrina Lenk and Adina Verson, as a leitmotiv. The words remain the same (and they're pretty graphic), but the meaning keeps changing, growing.

Minchin and Warchus, being British and Australian, might have something to do with the show's overall anti-Americana flair. They also bring a nice Dickensian touch to the story. Like Ebenezer Scrooge, weatherman Phil Conners learns to be a human being during the course of 'Groundhog Day' without ever getting overly mushy about his transformation.The story of 'Groundhog Day' plays so well on stage because it reflects the dilemma of its performers. Whereas movie actors do a few takes and are done with it, the cast of any successful musical is fated to keep repeating itself for hundreds, if not thousands, of performances. 'Groundhog Day' mines that existential problem.

'War Paint' is never better than when it puts its two heroines in the same space and mind set. Also exquisite is 'Pink,' which is Arden's 'Is that all there is?' moment. These songwriters are good at the reflective; they know how to get under a character's skin and make us feel her pain, as well as her fierce determination.

Kline has always been the most balletic of actors. The 69-year-old actor no longer does the incredible pratfalls of his marvelous turn ages ago in 'The Pirates of Penzance' and 'On the Twentieth Century,' but then Garry Essendine is well into his 50s. The marvelous thing about Kline is that he gives the impression he could still do somersaults on stage if required, but instead makes do with the most incredible hand and wrist flips that turn even the donning of a dressing gown into a comic delight.

At last, a Broadway musical that exposes the bad effects of home schooling. Based on the 2001 French film, 'Amelie' opened Monday at the Walter Kerr Theatre, and its ultra-shy heroine is waifish to the point of being a vanilla wafer. Craig Lucas' confusing book never finds its focus, and offers quite a few beginnings until, finally, the waitress Amelie ('Hamilton' alum Phillipa Soo) watches TV to see the fatal car crash that took the life of Princess Diana.

A new revival of 'Miss Saigon' opened Thursday at the Broadway Theatre, and once again the music is merely loud when it needs to be affecting. No ballad is allowed to be sung pianissimo or mezza voce for more than a few bars before being inflated into a huge anthem on thwarted love and/or political tyranny.

Until Tony Shalhoub arrives on stage to usher in a very different second act, theatergoers at the Roundabout's American Airlines Theatre might get the impression that they're watching a big, broad comedy. So what if the play is Arthur Miller's 'The Price,' which opened Thursday? Until Shalhoub's entrance at the very end of act one, Danny DeVito has single-handedly turns 'The Price' into a Jewish laugh riot with his expert turn as Mr. Solomon, a comfy, psychologically astute furniture dealer right out of the Neil Simon playbook. Mr. Solomon gets the best price (for himself) by talking about everything - his wives, his retirement, his health - everything except what price he's willing to pay for the two Franz brothers' furniture, left to them by their long-departed father.

Sankoff and Hein's book tries to drum up suspense in the show's opening scenes by telling us that few of these visitors to Gander knew about the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, because few people back then owned cell phones. Really? As songwriters, this duo relies on a strong percussive element that's so incessant that their songs take on a militaristic flair. And they're also very, very loud. Gareth Owen's sound design is the most abrasive to grace a Broadway stage since the entry of 'Waitress' a year ago. Dialogue is shrill and disembodied from the actors, and when the ensemble sings any of the show's foot-stomping anthems, the lyrics are indecipherable. Come from Away is a musical about hope, perseverance and people coming together to help each other in difficult times. The Gander townspeople have much in common with the citizens of Meredith Willson's River City, only they're much more adorable.

Sam Gold is the latest to pick up the next-to-nothing-is-more approach to Tennessee Williams. The American director's 'Glass Menagerie' opened Thursday at the Belasco Theatre, and it is pure Gold in every sense of the word. Has there ever been a barer stage on Broadway? The four actors enter from a side door on the orchestra level, with Sally Field pushing newcomer Madison Ferris in a wheelchair. What follows is one of the evening's many silent longueurs as Ferris, a woman with muscular dystrophy, negotiates the small staircase to the stage to take her place there. Occasionally, she walks by pushing her buttocks in the air and taking steps on her feet and hands. But for most of the production, this Laura sits on the floor or in the wheelchair. It's odd to begin a review by concentrating on an actor's physical challenges, but that first long ascent to the stage pretty much establishes Field's tortured Amanda Wingfield and, in essence, Gold's take on 'The Glass Menagerie.' It's a daring, masterful stroke, and one that redefines the Williams classic, and will influence every 'Menagerie' to come in the next few years.

'Significant Other' begins as a gay '40-Year-Old Virgin' and ends up a gay 'Bridesmaids.' That's not necessarily a negative thing to say about Joshua Harmon's new comedy, which opened Thursday at Broadway's Booth Theatre. The show never feels derivative, even though you might get the impression you've seen this distraught hero before through a different prism in an alternate universe.

Lucy as Norma Desmond? Actually, Close isn't that subtle. Her Norma Desmond often resembles Carol Burnett's TV parody of an aging silent film star though the latter had far more resemblance to a human being. Like Burnett, Close gives a bravura performance: funny, over-the-top, ridiculous. The only vulnerability Close brings to the role, however, is her singing voice. The actress was never a great singer, but managed to be adequate by Broadway standards. Here, her vocal production changes with nearly every other note, and the resulting tone and pitch is just as variable.

Finally, August Wilson's 'Jitney' makes it to Broadway in a powerful, if uneven, new staging at MTC's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, where it opened Thursday. Until now, 'Jitney' had been the only one of Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle plays not to have appeared on Broadway, even though it was the first he wrote, in 1979. Has any great writer delivered a more accomplished first play?

Cate Blanchett is the attraction. Richard Roxburgh is the revelation. That overly brief assessment does not detract from Blanchett's considerable achievement in Andrew Upton's new play, 'The Present,' which opened Sunday at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. Upton and Blanchett would probably agree that the play, freely adapted and updated from Anton Chekhov's 'Platonov,' is all about that title character, Mikhail Platonov, a middle-aged schoolteacher who is as much adored by women and he is disgusted by himself.

Late in the show, somebody does relieve himself upstage on the subway platform, but otherwise this is not only a crime-free but a drama-free zone. Whether above ground or below ground, the 'In Transit' characters lead one to re-title the show 'Theaters Are for Sleeping.' Life here is so sanitized that the subway musician known as Boxman (Steven 'HeaveN' Cantor brilliantly replicates the screech and squeal of the train cars) never asks for a dime, gives sage advice, and swipes his MetroCard for those passengers less fortunate.