Terry Teachout

Herein lies part of the phoniness of 'Good People.' Of course people like Margie and Mikey exist, but I doubt it's a coincidence that they are exactly the kinds of people who fit into the familiar sociological narrative that permeates every page of this play. In Mr. Lindsay-Abaire's America, success is purely a matter of luck, and virtue inheres solely in those who are luckless. So what if Mikey worked hard? Why should anybody deserve any credit for working hard? Hence the crude deck-stacking built into the script of 'Good People,' in which Mikey is the callous villain who forgot where he came from and Margie the plucky Southie gal who may be the least little bit racist (though she never says anything nasty to Mikey's wife—that would be going too far!) but is otherwise a perfect heroine-victim.

If neatness is what you expect from John Guare's 'A Free Man of Color,' you'll be doomed to disappointment. Mr. Guare's ambitious new play, which tells the fantastic tale of Jacques Cornet (Jeffrey Wright), a 19th-century millionaire playboy from New Orleans who happens to be black, has a cast of 33 and runs for 2½ crowded hours. Yes, it sprawls, but for all its hectic messiness, 'A Free Man of Color' is one of the three or four most stirring new plays I've seen since I started writing this column seven years ago.

I must point out, however, that what Mr. Sullivan has done all but turns on its head the plain meaning of the text of 'The Merchant of Venice.' For my part, I prefer to see the play directed in an unsparingly harsh manner that doesn't paper over its ugliness, the way that Barbara Gaines staged it for Chicago Shakespeare Theater in 2005. But Mr. Sullivan's softer-edged interpretation works on its own terms, and no matter how you think 'The Merchant of Venice' ought to be done, this version will sweep you along with such hell-bent momentum that you'll forget there was an intermission.

Mr. Reubens's Broadway debut is, among other things, a comeback attempt, two widely publicized run-ins with the law having forced him into involuntary semiretirement. With $3 million in the box-office till to date, it looks like a success. I'm fine with that: Mr. Reubens has paid his debt to society, and this show, adroitly directed by Alex Timbers, the co-creator of 'Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,' is good for plenty of laughs. Appearances to the contrary, however, 'The Pee-wee Herman Show' is not really a children's show, so don't bring the kids unless you're prepared to do a fair amount of heavy-duty explaining.

Given a high-powered cast like this one, everything might have come up roses anyway, but Ms. Scott, who is about as Spanish as I am, turns in a chirpy, lightweight performance that conveys nothing of Pepa's sensuality. (Carmen Maura, who played the same character in the film, was the very embodiment of that savory quality.) Ms. Benanti, by contrast, makes a bold and energetic impression as Candela, galloping away with the best-in-show ribbon. Mr. Mitchell's part, however, borders on outright invisibility, while Ms. LuPone's spectacular gifts are wasted in a supporting role that allows her to do little but sing two forgettable songs and run around tearing her hair.

I had no trouble imagining a play by Mr. Thompson about the Scottsboro trials that could have introduced a new generation to one of the most troubling episodes in modern American history-but I doubt that any Broadway producer would have sunk a dime into it. In its place, then, we get a musical that slathers this terrible tale in a thick coat of musical-comedy frosting that has been spiked with cheap, elephantine irony. I can't imagine a nastier-tasting recipe.

With that sole exception, this is as fine a production of 'Driving Miss Daisy' as I can imagine. It is so fine, in fact, that I was astonished to be reminded that this is the play's Broadway premiere: The whole of its original 1,195-performance run in New York took place first at Playwrights Horizons and then at the John Houseman Theatre. Fortunately, it is being mounted in one of Broadway's most intimate and well-proportioned spaces, the 804-seat John Golden Theatre. This means, however, that tickets for the 16-week limited engagement of 'Driving Miss Daisy' are going to be hard to obtain, so do whatever you have to do to get one. Perhaps some hotshot at PBS will get the bright idea to tape the production-it would look terrific on TV-but I wouldn't count on it.

Mr. Lauria, whom TV viewers will remember from 'The Wonder Years,' knows a dream part when he sees one, and makes the most of this one. He plays Mr. Lombardi like a warmer but comparably tough version of George C. Scott's Patton, and lurking beneath the buzzsaw bluster of his win-or-else tirades is a stealthy note of Pattonesque desperation, the fear that he'll blow his last chance to make it as a head coach. Indeed, I was startled by the cinder-dark passion with which Mr. Lauria assures Keith Nobbs, the geeky reporter-interlocutor who narrates 'Lombardi,' that he'd 'just as soon die' as watch the Packers slip back into second place. I believed it, and so will you.

'Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson' is a not-exactly-history play in which the life of America's seventh president is given what might be called the Jon Stewart treatment (i.e., lots and lots of Irony Lite) and set to the style of rock known as 'emo' (i.e., unabashed emotion accompanied by a just-kidding wink that draws the deadly sting of sincerity). And what are the results? Mixed—but also, if a middle-age critic may dare to say so, hugely encouraging.

So why in the name of the bottom line is this awful play-for it is truly, excruciatingly awful-back for a second go-round? The answer is Mark Rylance, who starred in 'Boeing-Boeing' and is now giving another over-the-top performance as Valere, a fathomlessly vulgar, monstrously vain street player who has been thrust upon Elomire (David Hyde Pierce), the celebrated 17th-century playwright, and his resident drama troupe by the princess (Joanna Lumley) who is the company's all-powerful patroness.

Now that David Cromer's 'Our Town' has closed, 'A Life in the Theatre' is the New York show to see. I wish that Mr. Stewart had a stronger partner opposite him, but his performance is rich enough to carry the play all by itself.

So what went wrong? Pretty much everything, though by far the worst offender is Ms. Hawkins, a British film and TV actor of some note whose performance as Vivie couldn't be further off the mark. Shaw's stage directions describe Vivie as the quintessential example of 'the sensible, able, highly-educated young middle-class Englishwoman ... strong, confident, self-possessed.' For Ms. Hawkins to play her as a squeaky, flighty semitomboy is thus nonsensical, and the fact that she swallows at least half of her lines renders large chunks of the play all but unintelligible.

You may have guessed that I didn't expect to like 'The Pitmen Painters,' which by all rights should have been ludicrously heavy-handed. Sometimes it is, but more often Mr. Hall has rung fresh changes on his familiar formulas, and the result is a satisfying piece of entertainment that makes its points without leaving you too badly bruised about the head and shoulders.

Will they be able to keep the show open for another six months? I doubt it—and not just because they lack the name recognition necessary to galvanize the tourist trade. Much as I esteem both women, neither one of them is well cast.

The star of a show doesn't always get top billing. Denzel Washington is by far the biggest name associated with the first Broadway revival of August Wilson's 'Fences,' but my guess is that it's Viola Davis whose performance is going to stick with you. Not that Mr. Washington is anything less than solid, but Ms. Davis is something else again. I knew she was a remarkable artist—anyone who saw her in the Off-Broadway premiere of Lynn Nottage's 'Intimate Apparel' or the film version of John Patrick Shanley's 'Doubt' knows that—but what she's doing this time around goes straight into my scrapbook of stage performances from which you learn how brutally true to life great acting can be.

I haven't said anything about Rob Ashford's staging because there's not much to say other than that it's bland and unamusing. Rarely have so many jokes been stepped on so firmly. The only scene that takes off is the one in which Mr. Hayes picks up a drunken bimbo in a bar. The bimbo in question, fortunately, is Katie Finneran, who steals the show right out from under her famous colleagues. Ms. Finnernan received most of the applause during the curtain call at the preview I saw, and earned it. Also worthy of note is Scott Pask, whose elaborate set is a knowing sendup of corporate midcentury modernism (even the paintings on the walls of the offices of Consolidated Life are clever parodies of Arshile Gorky and Morris Louis). Mr. Pask and Ms. Finneran both deserve to be remembered when this year's Tonys are handed out. Saving their redeeming presences, 'Promises, Promises' is slick, pointless and forgettable.

By stuffing their staging into a shabby-looking set roughly comparable in size to a second-rate nightclub, Terry Johnson and Tim Shortall, the director and set designer, have clipped away the tinsel and made it possible for the audience to focus on the relationship of Georges (Kelsey Grammer, still best known for 'Frasier') and Albin (Douglas Hodge). To be sure, the score is as banal and the jokes as grating as ever, but at least you can believe in what you're seeing, and Messrs. Grammer and Hodge are so engaging that the show's shortcomings recede into the distance. Mr. Grammer needs to work harder at singing in tune, but he knows how to put a song across, while Mr. Hodge's Cockneyfied Albin is so outrageous that you'll want to give him a great big hug.

All this being the case, 'American Idiot' rises or falls almost entirely on the strength of the songs themselves, and I regret to say that I found them to be brain-numbingly dull. Perhaps I might have felt differently if I were 14, but I was all but incapable of attending to the puerile maunderings of Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day's lyricist, of which the following specimens are representative: • 'Well maybe I am the faggot America / I'm not a part of a redneck agenda.' • 'Lost children with dirty faces today / No one really seems to care.' • 'Summer has come and passed / The innocent can never last.' As for the music, it reminded me of an amphetamine-crazed hamster running on a treadmill.

Any show in which Ms. Cook sings 'Loving You,' 'Take Me to the World' and 'Send in the Clowns' is by definition worth seeing, and some of the other performances, especially Mr. Wopat's 'Epiphany' and Leslie Kritzer's 'Now You Know,' are powerfully moving. Mr. Sondheim's recorded commentary, alas, is genial but less than illuminating—he never says anything that will surprise anyone who has followed his career at all closely—and I can't help but think that a show whose running time is well over 2½ hours might have profited had it been trimmed by someone not associated with the Sondheim cult.

Don't go to 'Million Dollar Quartet' looking for great acting. Three members of the front line are not professional actors (Mr. Guest is the ringer), and the book, by Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux, is tissue-thin. This is the kind of show that goes flat whenever the characters stop singing and start talking. Fortunately, they do plenty of the former and not too terribly much of the latter, and Eric Schaeffer, the director, has staged the show so skillfully as to minimize the thespian shortcomings of its less experienced cast members.

Ken Ludwig writes comfy, low-stakes farces in which no one is embarrassed—at least not for long—and all of the characters live happily ever after. 'Lend Me a Tenor,' last seen on Broadway in 1990, is the quintessential example of Mr. Ludwig's easygoing comic approach, a farce about a production of Verdi's 'Otello' whose star (here played by Anthony LaPaglia) fails to show up for opening night. The plot is properly labyrinthine, the jokes reasonably clever, but never once do you thrill with sadistic glee as a pompous twit strolls heedlessly toward his well-deserved rendezvous with humiliation. If that's what you expect from a farce—and I do—you'll find 'Lend Me a Tenor' to be amiable but more then a few teeth short. If not, you'll like it just fine.

If you're a New Yorker with children, or if you're bringing the family to Manhattan this summer, you'll have to go to 'The Addams Family.' It won't kill you. You'll laugh a lot, though never during the unmemorable songs, which are supposed to be funny but aren't. You're more than likely to spend a considerable part of the evening wondering how much the set cost. And as you depart the theater, you'll probably catch yourself wondering whether it was really, truly worth it to take your kids to a goodish musical whose tickets are so expensive that you can buy an iPad for less than the price of four orchestra seats.

Alfred Molina, under normal circumstances a consummately fine actor, is here inexplicably reminiscent of Sgt. Bilko, while Eddie Redmayne plays his earnest young assistant with a dude-that's-soooo-cool slacker accent, a puzzling choice for a play set in the late '50s. As for the script, it consists of one high-art platitude after another ('To surmount the past, you must know the past'), most of them shouted by Mr. Molina. Even if the real-life Rothko talked this way, it doesn't make for good theater, nor does it tell you much of anything about the greatness of his paintings.

Twyla Tharp racked up a major disaster three seasons ago with 'The Times They Are A-Changin',' one of the lamest jukebox musicals ever to stagger onto Broadway. Not surprisingly, she's playing it very, very safe this time around: 'Come Fly Away' is a love-in-a-nightclub fantasy set to the ever-popular music of Frank Sinatra, whose recordings have previously accompanied three of Ms. Tharp's ballets. The songs are familiar, the dancers are pretty, the set is fancy and the band is hot. All that's missing from this recipe for success are a star and a few memorable onstage events.

The intentions of Geoffrey Nauffts's 'Next Fall,' a new play about a man (Patrick Breen) whose much younger lover (Patrick Heusinger) is dying, are palpably high-minded, and I suspect that many playgoers will think that this makes it worth seeing. Alas, 'Next Fall' is cliché-infested and cloyingly sentimental, and the fact that it has transferred to Broadway after a successful Off-Broadway run means only that you can fool some of the people most of the time.