The awful 2007 Broadway revival of “Grease” arrived Tuesday at the Dodge Theatre littered with four terrible understudies in lead roles. Not only were the substitute cast members dreadful, the production boasts tacky sets, costumes that did a bad job of suggesting the musical’s 1959 setting, as an appalling cast turns this usually affectionate glimpse at growing up in the 50s, into a dismal bore.

The show’s one “star,” and I use that word advisedly, is Taylor Hicks who won the one song Teen Angel role on an “American Idol” competition. His lackluster performance indicates that winning a television popularity contest does not create a Broadway star. Hicks’ listless “Beauty School Dropout” rendition is far from electrifying as he swiveled his hips synthetically and crooned in a mediocre voice. His performance contributed nothing to this limp staging.

With the opening of the enjoyable and zesty musical revue, “Smokey Joe’s Café,” Mesa’s Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre has returned to its former glory as an excellent entertainment bargain. During the past season, show selections and production quality has suffered as the theater has struggled to find a new audience while retaining its devoted followers. Results were mixed. With “Smokey Joe’s Café” the Broadway Palm’s new season starts off with a bang and other amenities like the included buffet dinner has returned to former standards as a new chef tackles an improved food selection.

I’ve cried at particularly moving moments in past theater productions. But in Arizona Theatre Company’s amazing “The Kite Runner” production, I was fighting tears throughout this powerful and touching story’s entire second act.

Adapted by playwright Matthew Spangler from Khaled Hosseini’s best selling novel, it brings Afghanistan life to a very personal level as it examines a side of this war-ravaged country we don’t see in daily news reports of the ongoing conflict.   

It’s a rare comedy production that survives a stodgy and draggy first act only to soar to comic heights after the intermission. That’s the case with Black Theatre Troupe’s “Steal Away,” an undistinguished Ramona King comedy about matronly Black ladies who established an admirable organization to help young Black women graduate from college.

One of William Shakespeare’s earliest farces, “The Comedy of Errors,” opens the Southwest Shakespeare Company season in a pleasant, if unremarkable staging by company artistic director Jared Sakren.

Leave it to our smaller theaters to bring interesting plays to town when the major companies ignore these works. Stray Cat Theatre opens its season with the local premiere of an acclaimed English play, “Blackbird,” by David Harrower. The production is a winner although it won’t appeal to all theatergoers due to the play’s controversial theme.

“Legally Blonde” adapts the teenybopper movie and adds blah songs. The result will bring in new teenage audiences but is it a decent musical that offers anything for regular Broadway musical fans? 

“Legally Blonde” doesn’t make a good musical because the lame story about a blonde bombshell who goes to Harvard to become a lawyer is pretty flat material. The touring version lacks the Broadway production’s splashy pizzazz in a skimpy, scaled down staging with a mediocre cast. A poor sound system loses much dialogue and many song lyrics.

Several times during Phoenix Theatre’s “Curtains” I had to remind myself I wasn’t at Broadway’s Al Hirschhfeld Theatre where I saw the musical’s original production.  The local staging equals and in some ways surpasses Broadway’s version.  From the overture’s downbeat, this splashy and entertaining show shouts Broadway precision, poise, professionalism, and sparkle.  And the original staging didn’t have this production’s zesty spunk and stylish energy.

(Musical Interlude) That’s a few seconds of the beautiful “Seasons of Love” from the wonderful 1996 original Broadway cast recording of Jonathan Larson’s trend-setting “Rent.” The exquisite Nearly Naked Theatre’s production, which opened over the weekend and is the musical’s first local staging, explodes in its own refreshing magnificence. This “Rent” should play here forever.

The cast, full of newcomers, are sheer perfection, they sing with unbelievable passion and beauty as they take lucky audiences on a remarkable journey through the early 1990s apathetic and emotionally estranged generation.

If you are over 40, you’ve heard the jokes about embarrassing medical procedures, forgetfulness, fading desire, graying and thinning hair, sagging waistlines, plaid clothes, AARP, surgeries to improve looks, biological time clocks, and the side effects of medication. Many of these symptoms aren’t funny and the blandly written “Midlife! The Crisis Musical” at the Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre doesn’t find any new humor about advancing years. Other age groups will be bored by the musical.

That the theater’s producers thought this show, presented here in its regional premiere, could amuse is surprising. On the final preview last Thursday, a smallish audience didn’t laugh or applaud much, and the amateurishly written show drew gasps at some vile language and occasional smutty content.