Theater: Louisa May on Broadway

Broadway musicals these days mostly fall into two camps. First there's the candy: shows with bouncy songs--often recycled rock songbooks--and jerry-built, cartoony, tongue-in-cheek books. These shows (Mamma Mia!, Hairspray, Avenue Q) give audiences a carefree evening of entertainment, which is all most of them want.

Then there are the steak dinners: musicals that at least try to provide a fully integrated, emotionally engaging theater experience, with music in the service of a story populated by real human characters. Steak dinners are pretty much off the Broadway menu right now. The few that come along (anything by Andrew Lloyd Webber in the past 15 years) usually get dismissed by the critics and struggle to run for a few months before being escorted to Broadway heaven.

Though it's based on a beloved book for young people, Little Women: The Musical is the most adult new musical of the Broadway season and an unexpectedly satisfying meal. Skillfully adapted from Louisa May Alcott's novel by Allan Knee (author of The Man Who Was Peter Pan, on which the film Finding Neverland is based), it reintroduces us to the four March sisters, marooned in their Massachusetts home while their father is off to the Civil War. Directed by Susan H. Schulman (The Secret Garden), the show is pretty, unpretentious, warmhearted but surprisingly restrained: even the death of Beth, the quiet sister felled by scarlet fever, takes place offstage.

As Jo, the tomboyish aspiring writer, Sutton Foster is a total delight, with gangly limbs always on the move, the comic timing of a vaudeville vet and a voice that can shake the balcony. She burst onto Broadway two seasons ago as the star of Thoroughly Modern Millie; she's even better here, a great singing comedian in the Carol Burnett mold. Maureen McGovern is a little stodgy as the mother, but the whole ensemble--including the men--meshes perfectly. If only the score by Jason Howland had a few decent tunes, Little Women might have been a real banquet. --By Richard Zoglin