No doubt you've encountered this cranky critter before — in any one of three animated feature films which have been DreamWorks goldmines. This is his first outing as a Broadway musical-comedy star, and there was a lot of wearing of the green among the first-nighters to make him feel relatively at home in the big city.

Katie Finneran, as usual on the arm of Darren Goldstein, arrived in a "big green dress to honor Brian d'Arcy James for his two hours of makeup before the show."

'Tis true. One of Broadway's better-looking leading men lurks in that hulking fat-suit, slathered down in green slime from dome to toe so that all that remains of James is his smile, teeth, eyes and eyebrows. Happily, the first and the last are rather identifiable, if not trademarks, by now, and they give you something to go on.

"This is the first time I've done a show where my eyebrows have been an asset," cracked the affable, unflappable James. "Usually, costume designers and makeup designers run in fear when they see the two tiny patches of land-mass that are above my eyes. It is an extraordinary opportunity to work on a true character. It's not every day that you get to try to figure out how an ogre walks or breathes or talks. Obviously, there's a template for what Mike Myers did in the movies, brilliantly — but this is a three-dimensional version so there's great liberty and opportunity to fill in the blanks that you would have in a live version of the story."

Sutton Foster, a comedic live-wire sending out sparks in all directions, is Fiona, the distressed, depressed damsel whom he rescues from 20 years of ivory-tower confinement. She's a bona fide princess — or, more precisely, princess by day, ogre by night — which makes her an ideal love interest. But it must irk James, after his time in the makeup chair, that she can go green in 55 seconds flat! "I can't reveal the secret, but it's cool," Foster said, fending off the obvious question every time it came up. "I feel so proud to be in this. It's a great meeting of material — and a great part."

Shrek asks the question, "Can an outcast ogre who offends all five senses find true love?" and answers it with a resounding "It's possible." As DreamWorks dollars keep the kids' eyes dancing with earthly delights, the old message of not judging a book by its cover is subliminally slipped in — healthy food-for-thought for the small-fry.

The musical's plot most faithfully follows the first film. Lord Farquaad, a sawed-off despot and the seed of one of the seven dwarfs (Grumpy, wouldn't ya know), needs to marry an authentic princess to become official King of Duloc so he enlists the aid of the brutish and smelly Shrek by promising to take back all the storybook characters he has driven out of Duloc and onto Shrek's swampy reserve. (The iconic fairytale folk got introduced in the second film but, following a Wicked rule of thumb, got used to color-up the musical.) On the way to delivering the freshly freed Fiona, she and Shrek fall in love, in their fashion (a fart-and-burp contest, set to music).

The posh and renovated Plaza Hotel admits ogres these days — maybe not to the honeymoon suite a la Barefoot in the Park but to the grand ballroom where the after-party was held. Strangely — very strangely among all that gold-leaf splendor — some of the hallways seemed Shrek-scented, as if a foul-smelling ogre had recently passed. One waiter blamed the odor on the candles; another on the new paint job.

A press area was set up in the lobby, and stars were interviewed as they arrived. Man of the hour was Christopher Sieber, who plays Farquaad on his knees and parades little puppet legs. It's a superb design effect, hilariously executed by Sieber, but you can't help but feel his post-show pain. "No, it's actually fine," he assured sympathetic inquirers. "It's the rest of the body that hurts — it's like shoulders and the back and the upper back, but the knees are fine. I'm very happy with what the end result is. It was a long haul to get here. It was nonstop, and things changed every day — and to finally, actually, have a performance and a show that is ours and we can be proud of it, is fantastic. I'm happy that the response to the show has been so great."

All that, and he loves the character. "He's so evil. You can go as far as you want with that. You really can. That's what the director, Jason Moore, was telling me. It's, like, 'Go ahead. Go as far as you want.' I stopped that in myself. I kept bringing myself back, and they kept saying, 'Go farther.' All of the creators gave me something to work with. I just added things here and there to see if that would fly, never commenting on the material because the writing and the music is funny enough. I would just add little things here and there, and before you know it they're in the show. I'm very blessed to have that. They let me do that."

Shrek's sidekick on his adventures is a donkey, called Donkey, played by Daniel Breaker with Eddie Murphy inflections. "Actually," he said, "I never saw the movies. Zero research. Somebody said the other day, 'You do a really good Eddie Murphy from 'Shrek.' I said, 'I'm not doing Eddie Murphy from 'Shrek.' I'm doing Eddie Murphy from 'Trading Places.' That's a very different Eddie Murphy."

He comes with adjustable donkey ears. "We have two types of ears. We have stationary ears. They're called stationary, but they're floppy. They're nicknamed Jasmin, those ears. And then we have the electronic ears that are also floppy but the lovely Aymee Garcia, who plays Mama Bear, operates them at key moments in the show. She is magnificent because she extends the donkey character, and those electronic ears are named Johnny Five. Important information. I haven't told anybody that."

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John Tartaglia, a Tony-nominated puppeteer from Avenue Q, finds himself now in the odd position of turning into a puppet. "When I got this show," he said, "a friend of mine told me, 'Oh my God! You're playing Pinocchio. Johnny, that's so ironic.' I said, 'What do you mean?' Finally, she said, 'You're a puppeteer and an actor, and you're playing a puppet.' It is kinda funny, like a karma payback for all the times I've used the puppet. Now, I get to play one."

He also doubles as The Magic Mirror who converses with Farquaad from time to time. "I had a friend come the other night who said, 'Oh, it's such shame you only do those two moments in the show.' But I'm doing something the whole show because I do The Magic Mirror, who's live every night. He's not recorded. It's actually a live motion-capture animation system. As soon as I'm done with Pinocchio and his friends, I run up five flights, and I sit in front of a bank of computers and cameras that record my face digitally. They put these things in my face. I get to come on and just be an idiot, and kinda steal that one song, so I love it. I have a blast." Continued...