A 'Porgy and Bess' made for Broadway

First things first. "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess" is a luscious piece of musical theater. Despite the ungainly estate-ordered title and some questionable "fixes" in Broadway's latest reshuffling of George and Ira Gershwin's 1935 "folk opera," this is a gripping, in-your-face, vibrant revival with Audra McDonald as a magnificent Bess, Norm Lewis as a heartachingly vital Porgy and a cast that plays both the drama and the music for keeps.

Of course, that drama isn't precisely the one that DuBose and Dorothy Heyward wrote about poor blacks on Catfish Row. And the jarring changes in orchestral and harmonic arrangements don't always trust the ones George Gershwin created for a masterwork that, for starters, gave the world "Summertime" and "It Ain't Necessarily So."

Arguments about director Diane Paulus' revisions have been boiling since the tryout in Cambridge, Mass., last summer. Are these useful corrections of racial stereotypes? Betrayals of artistic integrity? How about both?

But taken on its own terms -- which is the way I prefer right now to take it -- the abridged-for-modern-Broadway production bursts with fierce immediacy. Despite sugarcoating the tragedy with upbeat promise of redemption, the show respects its internal logic. The sets -- boarded up buildings for the neighborhood, a blue sheet for the picnic sky -- are aggressively drab, a decision that guards against happy-peasant whitewash.

From the start, McDonald's Bess is no fast-living, coke-loving spitfire. With a deep scar on her cheek and an undercurrent of gravity, this Bess is more a victim of rough circumstances than a wild thing with the potential for goodness. She also happens to have a voice that's luminous on the top, burnished in the middle and an astonishing technique that channels clear emotional truth.

David Alan Grier is terrific as a dangerously amoral Sportin' Life, though would anyone in 1935 say he was "on hiatus"? Phillip Boykin sings and acts powerfully as a man-monster of a Crown, though having him rape instead of seduce Bess deprives her character of more challenging complicity.

Lewis, with his mellow sweetness and intelligence, has plenty of chemistry with McDonald. But Suzan-Lori Parks' adaptation hobbles Porgy's poignancy by changing him from a hopeless cripple in a goat cart to a disabled man with a cane and a new leg brace. This makes Bess' love for him feel less radical and, though the production's happy ending was ditched on the road, a big Broadway hint of feel-good future remains.

Yes, it's shameless. Yes, it works.

WHAT "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess"

WHERE Richard Rodgers Theatre, 226 W. 46th St., Manhattan

INFO $65-$135; 877-250- 2929, porgyandbess onbroadway.com

BOTTOM LINE Luscious and vibrant, despite questionable "fixes"