Having found early success in their still-young careers with Illyria, their musical adaptation of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Peter Mills and Cara Reichel have gone back to the Bard with Honor, making its world premiere at the Hudson Guild, which loosely transplants As You Like It to feudal Japan.

As always, there are more than enough virtues in this enterprising pair's work to recommend a visit; most notably, Mills' gift for infectious melodies -- little of which, however, is Japanese is flavor -- and his singular brand of super-smart word play that makes him a realistic successor to the mantle of Stephen Sondheim.

Getting to the good parts of Honor, however, takes a bit of patience, a[...]