Since the turn of the century, Bruce Springsteen’s work has undergone a crucial shift away from the personal and toward the communal: embracing the bold, unifying power of We. After reassembling his trusted E Street Band at the end of the 1990s for a reunion tour, Springsteen, as the story goes, was called back to creative action in the wake of 9/11 upon hearing five simple words from a fan: “Bruce, we need you now.” In the ensuing years, he has more or less directly addressed that request, taking on the voice of the masses with a knowing and authoritative empathy. “We pray for your strength, Lord,” he sang on 2002’s The Rising; “we shall overcome,” he assured us later in the Bush years; “we are alive,” he insisted on 2012’s Wrecking Ball.

Of course, We have always been there in Bruce songs—it’s tramps like us, after all. Yet the devoted faithful, and their memories, now claim more space than ever within Springsteen’s universe, with the man himself honoring fans’ song requests at shows and putting together elaborate documentaries to celebrate his most well-loved albums. “It’s all a battle against the futility and the existential loneliness,” Springsteen said a few years ago, talking about his relationship with the community that’s formed around his work. “It may be that we are all huddled together around the fire and trying to fight off that sense of the inevitable. That’s what we do for one another.”

Springsteen on Broadway, a new one-man show at Manhattan’s Walter Kerr Theatre, is the latest evolution of that relationship. The setlist, which will basically remain static throughout the show’s sold-out, four-month run, includes most of his radio workhorses and enough rarities to perk up the ears of the lifers. And unlike his previous solo tours behind 1995’s The Ghost of Tom Joad and 2005’s Devils & Dust, which were formed around new work that was intentionally dense, necessitating long, explanatory introductions for each song, Springsteen on Broadway is more intuitive and, as a whole, more comprehensive. If you’ve never seen Bruce live, this show illustrates his best sides as a performer: a helplessly charismatic showman; a competent multi-instrumentalist; and a writer with a body of work whose depth reveals itself patiently but forcefully when brought to life.

The question lingers, though, of where his audience fits in. During a performance earlier this week, there is an occasionally awkward energy. When the crowd starts singing along to the first verse of “Dancing in the Dark,” Springsteen cuts them off. “I can take this one myself,” he says abruptly, eliciting a brief burst of applause and laughter before everyone abides and shuts up. But Springsteen fans have been trained to sing along and, more generally, to inhabit a type of collective abandon in the presence of their leader. So, despite being told upon entering that photography is strictly prohibited, many openly disavow the rule almost immediately. A woman to my right whispers to me, showing off her intimate lock screen portrait of Bruce’s ass, from a show in Connecticut: “Do you really think they’ll kick me out for taking just one picture?”