Broadway

In the middle of Magic/Bird, the smooth and warm new play about a friendship that blooms from the deep roots of rivalry, playwright Eric Simonson writes a deft pivoting scene. Two young guys, both basketball rivals of worldwide renown, are forced to lunch together by one of their moms. You look on to see what happens when these two very different people - opposites, really, in every way except their brilliance on the basketball - have no option but to relate. Friendship, just a glimmer of it, begins to be defined.

The king of the Broadway jungle You got Leo, the MGM lion (Ars Gratia Artis!). You got Bubbles, logo of the Detroit Lions. You got the Cowardly Lion of The Wizard of Oz. You got Kimba, and Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion, and Kitty Kat (feline of the Addams Family). Now shove over for The Lion King!! The Broadway show, not the 1994 Disney flick. According to figures (unadjusted for inflation) released Monday, Lion padded past ThePhantom of the Opera last week to become Broadway's all-time top grosser, with about $854 million.

Somewhere over the rainbow, Judy Garland never spotted her pot of gold. But a British actress named Tracie Bennett found hers - in the person of Judy. She is sensational in the erratic Broadway show End of the Rainbow, about Garland's last attempt at a comeback, which opened Monday night. If you're among Garland's legion of fans, you'll want to see Rainbow, but even if you're not, you'll want to see Bennett. Every minute she sings, Bennett channels Garland like a medium at a séance, and what would a Judy Garland impression be without the singing?

SOMETIME around 10 p.m. Tuesday at the Academy of Music, the Philadelphia debut of the latest iteration of "West Side Story," which runs through April 8, will conclude with a reprise of "Somewhere. " At this point, the audience will no doubt rise to its feet and reward the cast with a loud and appreciative ovation. But no matter how enthusiastic the crowd's response may be, it probably won't match that of those at Washington, D.C.'s National Theatre on Aug. 19, 1957. "We got like 15 curtain calls," recalled Michael Callan, 77, of the night the groundbreaking contemporary adaptation of William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" had its pre-Broadway premiere.

What a divine season it is for Jesus on Broadway. On one stage, nuns make a joyful noise in Sister Act. On another, he figures highly in The Book of Mormon . Yet another has him as the central figure in Godspell . And he is now in revival - here, we're talking Broadway more than theology - in an effusive Jesus Christ Superstar , the Tim Rice-Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that opened Thursday. It's full of powerful, melodic '70s-tinged music - the show premiered in 1971 and "I Don't Know How to Love Him" broke out to become a hit. The score, with Rice's clever lyrics and Lloyd Webbers many fanfare songs, is great fun to hear again, or probably also for the first time.

NEW YORK - David Alan Grier has a gentle message for anyone who is getting all hot and bothered thinking that he's helping ruin an American masterpiece. "Relax. Let it go," he says. "We're not killing it. We're just doing our version. " The actor and comedian is currently starring as Sporting Life in a reworked version called The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess on Broadway, following a controversial tryout in the fall near Boston. The creative team, with the blessing of the creators' estates (thus the title)

Clybourne Park , a provocative and funny play about the way people discuss race - has become a magical stage property, its rapid trajectory unstoppable. The play, set in the same Chicago house that figured in Lorraine Hansberry's groundbreaking 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun , premiered just two years ago Off-Broadway, hit London 18 months ago, and then Washington. It got legs, as they say - and quickly - with recent productions in Toronto and Germany. In March, Clybourne Park won Britain's prestigious Olivier Award, in April the Pulitzer Prize.