the lady eve; The Apple Tree lures Kristin Chenoweth back to Broadway.

Ever since she left the long-running witchfest Wicked two and a half years ago, Kristin Chenoweth has been

on a prodigal journey, by which I mean she's been in Hollywood. Don't get me wrong-she was swell in The Pink Panther and Bewitched and adorable as a White House PR whiz on The West Wing. But Chenoweth is that rarest of commodities: a genuine musical-comedy star. This month, she makes her long-awaited homecoming to Broadway in the Roundabout's revival of the 1966 musical confection The Apple Tree.

With her Tony-winning turn in the 1999 revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and her dizzily hilarious performance as Glinda in Wicked, Chenoweth showed that she could take earthbound material and make it soar. In The Apple Tree, which she starred in last season for one weekend as part of New York City Center's indispensable Encores! series, she belts it into the stratosphere. A trio of musical fables based on short stories by Mark Twain, Frank R. Stockton, and Jules Feiffer, the rarely seen show, originally a vehicle for the legendary Barbara Harris, lets her sink her teeth into three juicy roles and a sweetly tart score by the Fiddler on the Roof songwriters, Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock. "I'm so used to having to give it and give it and give it," she says backstage at Studio 54, where the show is about to go into rehearsal. "Here, all I have to do is act the parts and sing the songs, and the rest takes care of itself."

Well, not exactly. Under the spirited direction of Gary Griffin, Chenoweth uses her flawless comic timing and astonishing vocal range to show us the many faces (and, in Jess Goldstein's eye-popping costumes, bodies) of Woman through the ages. ...