Broadway Bound 

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We seem to be visiting with Crystal on his front porch. The intimacy is further heightened when the front windows disappear and scrapbook memorabilia — or 8mm-film footage shot by his dad — are projected on the screen. So we see Mantle close-up tossing baseballs with his teammates on the fateful day of Billy's first pilgrimage to Yankee Stadium. Or, with lights merely flickering, we watch a shtick where Crystal mimes a home movie.

During the 20 segments after intermission, Crystal lingers on his father's death just long enough for it to continue resonating. He masters long-form narration rather impressively, easing rather than rushing into his chronological presentation, planting little signposts along the way in Act 1 that he deftly references in Act 2. When he earns an athletic scholarship, we're reminded that he learned to hit the curveball from his dad. We revisit Yankee Stadium during 2001 World Series shortly after 9/11 — this time in the VIP box — where Crystal has the opportunity to lampoon fellow guests Henry Kissinger and President Bush.

And he makes his second fantasy journey to confront God, a segment so powerful that many in our audience presumed it was the finale. Even his mom's death, which occurred while he was trying out this homage to Dad, is woven into the fabric, adding to the spontaneity and candor. Des McAnuff's direction is lightly but inconsistently stylized, leaving us with a couple of stagey moments, but Crystal's spell prevails.

The show is slated to close on March 5 with all non-premium tickets sold until then. I think it's fairly safe to anticipate at least one extension of the run to appease fans and enhance Crystal's electability at Tony time. Grab a seat if you can.

La Cage aux Folles (***1/2) — Critics gave this glitzy revival a lukewarm reception when it opened in early December, saying that Gary Beach's Albin/ZaZa was bland and that the Harvey Fierstein/Jerry Herman 1983 musical had devolved into a crossdressing tribute to family values. Hardly two weeks later, Beach was breathing fire into his Act 1 closer, "I Am What I Am," transforming the entire evening into a fervid affirmation of individualism. Quite frankly, I was trembling at intermission after what I'd just seen.

Compared to his Tony-winning antics as Roger de Bris in The Producers, Beach really has backed off somewhat on his flamboyance. But that's all for the good when Albin's stepson sees the light, and ZaZa's comedy still sparkles. There's nothing particularly Gallic about Daniel Davis, renowned for his starchy stint in The Nanny on TV. But his urbanity as Georges, proprietor of the flaming St. Tropez nightspot, lends a classy silken sheen to both of his troubled relationships. His ambivalence toward his son Jean-Michel is particularly well-gauged.

Wickedness blossoms all evening long. William Ivey Long's costume designs range from the bohemian to the incorrigible, and set designer Scott Pask allows his palette to run wild among crimson, pink, fuchsia, and purple each time we revisit La Cage — with dangling swings and ropes to add kitsch and kink.

A former CL Newcomer of the Year, Will Taylor, is among Les Cagelles, surely one of the high-kickingest chorus lines to explode anywhere. With a book and score as sturdy as this one — and crusading homophobes still on the loose in high places — La Cage remains relevant and powerful.

Gem of the Ocean (***1/2) — August Wilson's mighty ambition, stretching across a decade-by-decade, 10-play cycle of compassionate, poetically engaged playwriting, doesn't really stop at showing us the black experience in the 20th Century. No, Wilson is concerned with the full cargo of the African Diaspora, the history of suffering, the heritage of achievement, and the demons hatched in steerage and slavery that bedevil the race from within.

Gem stands chronologically at the shore of Wilson's sequence, setting us down in 1904 Pittsburgh. It's the crossroads where the historic and legendary past meets the struggles, the triumphs, and the heartbreaks to come. With Phylicia Rashad as the 285-year-old Aunt Ester, all the precious silt of black bondage is dropped inside her Wylie Avenue parlor. Her humble house of refuge is mystically transfigured in an unforgettable scene where she takes young Citizen Barlow on a voyage of purification to the City of Bones. Part of Ester's expiation ritual takes us back to the bowels of the ship that carried her across the ocean to America.

There's an elegant symmetry between our guilt-ravaged hero, Citizen, and the ruthless Caesar, willing materialistic enforcer of the prevailing white order. Citizen has killed a man by stealing and failing to speak out on behalf of the man accused of the crime. Caesar has killed a man for stealing — and not listening when he was ordered to surrender. Similar touches of Wilson's craft are deeply woven everywhere.