Joe Turner's Come and Gone

GRADE: A-

By August Wilson. Directed by Barlett Sher. The Belasco Theatre. (CLOSED)

This long-overdue Broadway revival of what is pretty universally recognized as August Wilson's masterpiece gets mostly hosannas from critics, who tend to start by praising the play and end by either exalting the director, Bartlett Sher, and his designers and cast, or quibbling slightly with Sher's non-realistic directorial touches. (That he's the first white director of a major Wilson revival gets a few mentions but no opprobium.) A few critics do more than quibble with Sher's choices, and one (John Simon, as if that's a surprise) dissents on the play's merits. Among the cast, critics single out Roger Robinson as the magical "binder" Bynum, but they differ on whether The Wire's Chad L. Coleman delivers in the crucial role of wandering churchman Loomis.

Variety A+
(David Rooney) August Wilson's gift for storytelling has rarely been more beguiling than in this lyrical 1986 drama, and in his searing revival, director Bartlett Sher makes every note strong and true...Yeargan creates kinetic art out of the assembly of a set, and then strips its elements away again to tighten our focus on the drama. That pattern works magnificently here...The play's ruminative pauses are every bit as gripping as its operatic crescendos...The musicality and complex humanity of these and other passages give the play an almost overwhelming cumulative emotional power, with even some of its most easygoing banter underscored by roiling melancholy...Once again proving himself a director of rare sensitivity, Sher has honored this extraordinary play with a production of piercing depth and shimmering beauty.

NY1 A+
(David Cote) This moody, moving production features a rock-solid cast of stage veterans and younger performers, and it captures perfectly the natural rhythms and mythic dimensions of Wilson's mid-career play, last seen on Broadway 21 years ago...Bartlett Sher's production remains fiercely true to the spirit of Wilson's humane and morally purging vision, in which the everyday shades into the expressionistic, and Loomis realizes that only an act of self-violence will free him from his past. "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" proves that Wilson's rich, cathartic dramas are with us for a good long time, no matter who's behind the scenes.

CurtainUp A+
(Simon Saltzman) Stirring and riveting...If one play can be singled out from the other nine brilliant and ambitious plays to be his masterpiece, this may be it. Certainly this wonderful Lincoln Center Theatre production will help place it among the must see plays of this season. A splendid ensemble, under the direction of Bartlett Sher, graces this stunning Broadway revival...Sher once again proves a master at keeping the integrity of the original. But it is the way he has anchored Wilson's earthy text to a spatially fluid reality that is simply stunning.

Wall Street Journal A+
(Terry Teachout) This revival, whose magnificent cast has been directed by Bartlett Sher with uncommon sensitivity, might just manage to break the late playwright's long string of bad luck. Or not: Joe Turner's Come and Gone is a long, occasionally knotty play that asks much of its viewers, and Broadway has become an increasingly inhospitable place for serious drama. Nowadays it generally takes a Hollywood star to keep a straight play open, and no one in "Joe Turner" has that kind of drawing power. So let me put it as simply as I can: This is a show you must see...It will remind you of how good live theater can be--and send you home unwilling to settle for anything less than the very best...Everyone on stage deserves to be remembered at Tony time.

Backstage A+
(Erik Haagensen) As befits a play using song as a central metaphor, Wilson's writing brims with musicality, here beautifully orchestrated by director Bartlett Sher and his fine cast...The show's breakout performance belongs to Roger Robinson as Bynum, whose dancing eyes, impish grin, and effortless authority create the magic Wilson calls for...Despite its excellence, Joe Turner's Come and Gone lasted only 105 performances in its first Broadway appearance. Lincoln Center Theater is to be commended for giving us the opportunity to rediscover this American masterpiece.

Theatermania A+
(David Finkle) A remarkable production directed with boldness by Bartlett Sher and acted by a company unafraid of unleashing outsized emotions...The ensemble...is uniformly excellent at depicting unconsciously poetic citizens undergoing change, whether from country habits to industrializing city ways, from superstitious inclinations to hard-nosed practicality, or from chains to challenge. Praise is to especially be heaped on the brooding Coleman and the sagacious Robinson in the most pivotal roles.

Nytheatre.com A+
(Martin Denton) Joe Turner's Come and Gone is rewarding and full and—that rarity in theatre—authentically cathartic. In a Broadway season that has given us a real bumper crop of excellent plays to enjoy, this is one I can unconditionally recommend and even dub a must-see. Wilson shares so much of the human experience with us in this admirable and powerful play.

Talk Entertainment A+
(Oscar E Moore) A brilliant production. It is elegant. Down to earth. Poetic. Stylish. Lyrical. Mystical. Lusty and magical...Bartlett Sher...deserves every accolade coming his way. His vision has made the play an event that cannot be missed. It is theatrical bliss where there is hope for a new generation and love and laughter reign supreme.

The New York Times A
(Ben Brantley) Great works of art often tote heavy baggage. Yet the revival of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, a drama of indisputable greatness, feels positively airborne. Much of Bartlett Sher’s splendid production...moves with the engaging ease of lively, casual conversation. Some part of you, though, is always aware that there’s a storm whipping within and around the breezy talk, a gale-force wind that picks up and scatters people as if they were dandelion seeds...Its characters, embodied by one of the strongest ensembles in town, seem reassuringly knowable instead of fancy figures in an allegory. This is true even when they’re describing mystical visions involving bones walking out of the ocean...It would be a shame if this production doesn’t find a wide and enthusiastic audience. It’s an (almost) unconditional pleasure to watch.

The Daily News A
(Joe Dziemianowicz) This rich and mysterious play is filled with the writer's own sort of music - from the lyrical language to percussive outbursts. It's all expertly played in Lincoln Center's eloquent revival..Director Bartlett Sher ("South Pacific") seamlessly integrates realistic elements and the metaphoric, including the evocative set - fanciful floating windows with a so-real-you'd-pick-it vegetable garden. Sher has staged scenes that are dizzyingly powerful or beautiful (or both) - an ecstatic dance, a furious fit and a shimmering conclusion. But it's the compelling characters, superbly realized, that keep you rapt.

Associated Press A
(Michael Kuchwara) One of Wilson's finest, rich in character and a poetry that suggests the world-weariness of the blues. Both come through in this impeccable Bartlett Sher-directed revival, more impressionistic than its predecessor but, nonetheless, ablaze in the theatricality you expect from Wilson...The powerful Chad L. Coleman makes a brooding Loomis, a spectral figure dressed in a long black coat and big broad-brimmed hat...Sher's design team accentuates the play's otherworldly character. Michael Yeargan's airy, non-naturalistic set seems to float across a stage that's often bathed in warm, soft lighting designed by Brian MacDevitt.

USA Today A
(Elysa Gardner) Wilson's dialogue has its own majestic music, and the actors here are intuitive players. Chad L. Coleman's Loomis speaks in a gruff but strained voice that reinforces the contradiction between his formidable physical presence and his broken spirit. Loomis...manages, as so many of Wilson's characters do, to find strength and the possibility of love under the most bitter circumstances. If that's not spiritual transcendence, I don't know what is.

Lighting & Sound America A
(David Barbour) Bartlett Sher doesn't direct plays; he liberates them...Sher has an uncanny knack for taking plays of a certain age and releasing them from the constraints of naturalism...In Sher's hands, Joe Turner's Come and Gone is finally fulfilled as both a comic drama of black life in the early 20th century and as an incantatory vision of the black race at a turning point--struggling to shake off the taint of slavery and reaching out for freedom in a America transformed by industrial revolution. It's an extraordinary production.

Bergen Record A
(Robert Feldberg) Don’t expect rapid-fire action. You need to get into the playwright’s deliberate rhythm to appreciate the rich human and historic tapestry he creates, with lots of humor and poetic monologues filled with metaphors and mysticism...And his vision is beautifully realized in a production that’s been directed with warmth and clarity by Bartlett Sher.

Newsday A-
(Linda Winer) How good it is to finally have this shimmering, sprawling, haunting work back on Broadway, even if the Lincoln Center Theater's fine production, directed by Bartlett Sher, doesn't have all the gut-deep resonant style of Lloyd Richards' original...Sher...directs the large cast with passion, a few jarring special effects and an atypical - for Wilson - presentational clarity. But for all the lucidity, it's hard not to miss the spell of the off-center atmosphere, the luscious musicality that lingers beyond the straightforward meaning of Wilson's words. The experience is more like watching a marvelous play than like being allowed to overhear people as they live.

Entertainment Weekly A-
(Melissa Rose Bernardo) August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone has enough energy and divine spark to tear down walls. So in this bold and beautifully atmospheric revival, director Bartlett Sher (and set designer Michael Yeargan) simply didn't build any walls...The haunting, collage-like Joe Turner — which takes its title from an old blues song — is the playwright's most complex and most spiritual drama...The hulking Coleman (perhaps best known as Cutty, the boxer, on HBO's The Wire), regrettably, is not entirely up to the task...unlike, for example, the sensational Roger Robinson, who plays Bynum, the aged rootworker.

New York Post B+
(Frank Scheck) A critical success but commercial failure back in 1988, this challenging work demands the tender loving care only a well-funded nonprofit troupe can provide. Bartlett Sher's superb production captures all of the emotional and stylistic nuances of the play, even if his staging gets a bit gimmicky...Naturalistic drama teems with supernatural and religious elements as Loomis struggles to find both the wife he abandoned years ago and his own spiritual peace...Wilson's writing is so rich and emotionally resonant that it's a shame Sher gussies up the proceedings with abstract, shifting scenery and silly special effects. But these are quibbles about an otherwise beautifully acted production of a neglected masterwork.

Time Out NY B+
(Adam Feldman) This Lincoln Center Theater production's expressionistic touches are of a piece with the overt symbolism of Wilson's drama, which deals elliptically with slavery and its rippling aftershocks of dislocation and abandonment. The action is slow to develop: The long first act is full of novelistic storytelling and mood-setting, with exuberantly lyrical passages balanced by eloquent silences—and, as always with Wilson, exquisite parts for an ensemble cast...Some spectators may grow impatient with the pace of the journey that Wilson takes us on, but it is a fascinating trip. The play offers an experience beyond the ordinary to those who can make themselves open.

AM New York B+
(Matt Windman) Sher’s expressionistic touches – which include even a shower of gold glitter - would appear to be at odds with the play’s naturalistic qualities. But on second glance, one must remember that Wilson’s plays invoke a musicality of language and depth of emotion that transcend the boundaries of normal stage realism. And on the whole, this is an absorbing and satisfying production of a difficult three-hour play.

Village Voice B
(Michael Feingold) Written before most of the other cycle plays, Joe Turner has a dreamlike quality as it reels from bawdry and seduction up to the visionary metaphysics of its main story, most of which is packed into its elaborate, explosive final scene, in which prophecies and the expectations of psychological melodrama are fulfilled simultaneously...Bartlett Sher's production, its scenic elements constantly gliding on--and offstage, catches the dreamlike quality, but oddly combines it with a presentational acting style that pushes Wilson's innocently straightforward characters into irritatingly showbizzy postures: They're selling you the dream, not living it. Coleman, smoldering like a volcano about to blow, and Marsha Stephanie Blake, as a meekly lovelorn young woman, seem to have wisely ignored the incessant eyes-front directing; Roger Robinson, as a canny old mystic, cunningly turns the stagy flamboyance to the character's purpose, creating the show's best-sustained performance.

The Hollywood Reporter B
(Alexis Greene) As staged by Bartlett Sher, who directed LCT's supreme revival of "South Pacific," this is an operatic "Joe Turner": imposing, if at times grandiose. Michael Yeargan's minimal set is backed by the shadowy images of smoke stacks towering atop Pittsburgh's steel mills...Back in 1988, Lloyd Richards, Wilson's mentor and devoted director, staged a production filled with distinct voices and characterizations. Sher takes the play to the level of religious parable, an attention-getting and, in its way, forceful approach. But what the play gains in symbolism it loses in delicacy, since the larger-than-life style obliterates many of the details of Wilson's wonderful characters. Still, Sher elicits excellent performances.

Theater News Online B
(Matt Wolf) The song is surprisingly muted in the Lincoln Center Theater revival of August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone...More than any other Wilson play, Joe Turner invokes metaphysics and ritual on the way to an ending that seems at once shocking and absolutely right...Just when you're expecting Joe Turner to rise up and overwhelm you, much as Herald Loomis is seen to be dramatically remaking himself, the production stops short of the operatic epiphany that was presumably intended...What rarely occurs is that verbal polyphony, alternately gorgeous and portentous, that has long rendered Wilson the most innately musical of American dramatists.

Bloomberg News B
(John Simon) Some of the plays are better than others, successful roughly in inverse proportion to the amount of metaphysics, mysticism and the supernatural they contain. In this respect, Joe Turner is one of the chief offenders, weltering in several kinds of high-flown overreaching...Almost everyone here is searching or waiting, including the cheerfully fantastical Bynum. The play is all about finding and binding, whether a missing person or a missing song. So far, so good. But there are also phantasmagoric visions of bones walking on water, debilitating possession by that ghostly vision, talking in tongues and mystical self-mutilation and a bit too much of that elusive, in-dwelling song...Bartlett Sher’s staging adds some unscripted but welcome touches, often visually stunning.

Talkin' Broadway C
(Matthew Murray) It's almost impossible to tell from Sher's unnecessarily overstuffed mounting that this second play (chronologically speaking) in Wilson's decade-by-decade examination of the 20th-century African American experience is among the rawest and most powerful. As he did with his 2006 LCT revival of Clifford Odets's Awake and Sing!, Sher relies too much on his own pet tricks to present a story that's more than capable of telling itself...Wilson's plays reject this approach because they already contain all the symbolism and invention they require...Disconnecting the play's events - and especially Herald's revelations - from reality completely subverts the entire point of the play: the indoctrination of African ritualism into the texture of American society, and what that means for both the giving and receiving cultures...The shows Sher directs would greatly benefit from him getting over himself...Even so, Sher has elicited some strong performances from his actors...Coleman comes across the weakest.

Variety A+ 14; NY1 A+ 14; CurtainUp A+ 14; Wall Street Journal A+ 14; Backstage A+ 14; Theatermania A+ 14; Nytheatre.com A+ 14; Talk Ent A+ 14; The New York Times A 13; The Daily News A 13; Associated Press A 13; USA Today A 13; LS&A A 13; Bergen Record A 13; Newsday A- 12; Entertainment Weekly A- 12; New York Post B+ 11; TONY B+ 11; AM New York B+ 11; VV B 10; The Hollywood Reporter B 10; Theater News Online B 10; Bloomberg News B 10; Talkin' Broadway C 7; 294/24=12.25 (A-)

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Prayer for My Enemy

GRADE: B-

By Craig Lucas. Dir. Bartlett Sher. Playwrights Horizons. (CLOSED)

Don't be fooled by the middling grade; Craig Lucas' new American family drama, which takes on homophobia, alcoholism, road rage, and the Veitnam and Iraq wars, receives not lukewarm mixed reviews but a jostling crowd of opinionated, and widely differing, responses that end up averaging out in an uneasy middle. That may be only fitting: Champions think the play's complexity and polyphony speaks poignantly to the most pressing issues of the day; detractors less charitably see the interior monologues Lucas gives his characters as rambling, unconnected, and undramatic. Most praise the straight-play performances by two musical theater stars, Victoria Clark and Jonathan Groff, but critics are divided on whether director Bart Sher did brilliant, understated work or just checked out.

Nytheatre.com A+
(Stan Richardson) What fascinates me most about Craig Lucas is that he has no gimmick, no tricks up his sleeve—he's not even aspiring to be one step ahead of his audience. In fact, he remains resolutely a few steps behind, examining what we—preoccupied with our own velocity—have overlooked, taken for granted, or dismissed...Go see Prayer For My Enemy because you will at times bark with laughter, at times be stunned to silence, and all the while find yourself hanging on every eerily familiar word uttered by these vivid characters, more captured than written.

Talkin' Broadway A
(Matthew Murray) Prayer for My Enemy is one of those plays that should only be examined whole - dissecting the individual pieces will only encourage your drowning in its stream of consciousness...What had started off scattered, almost confused, turns profound and reminds us that the formation and dissolution of relationships and friendships, births, deaths, and everything in between, all mark a moment in history that will never come again...The cast and Sher all understand what Lucas has made implicit: everything is important, because everything makes a contribution - in both life and theatre. It’s to the considerable credit of everyone involved in Prayer for My Enemy that it’s impossible to distinguish between the two.

Newsday A-
(Linda Winer) Few playwrights pull us down life's rabbit holes with the dark yet altogether engaging force of Craig Lucas...In "Prayer for My Enemy," the multilayered, deeply unsettling and beautifully conceived new work at Playwrights Horizons, the small-town serenity barely covers the separate abysses where all six characters are in their own free falls...Bartlett Sher...gets his quiet powerhouse of a cast to juggle cosmic questions with the casual absurdities of family life...Only the final few moments, a hymn, feel undeserved.

American Theatre Web A-
(Andy Propst) Lucas' various plots may sound like a lot for a 90-minute drama, but while "Enemy" may feel overstuffed, in director Bartlett Sher's taut staging that some of New York's finest actors, the play is never anything less than a captivating stew of ideas and emotions...On many levels, "Enemy" feels as if it might want to be expanded. The shorthand in which it has been penned seems too terse for such a rich mix of emotions and ideas.

Time Out NY B+
(David Cote) Prayer for My Enemy unfolds like a loose, Thornton Wilder–esque meditation on family and social ethics, with the Iraq War looming large in the form of gay soldier Billy (Jonathan Groff, making a solid nonmusical debut). Billy’s upstate New York clan is a Whitman’s Sampler of middle-class dysfunction...In between domestic scenes, Victoria Clark simmers brilliantly on the sidelines as Dolores, a high-strung New Yorker taking care of her dying mother, and whose life intersects fatally with the family. Bartlett Sher’s elegant production guides us sensitively through these lives of quiet desperation—well, mostly quiet.

CurtainUp B+
(Elyse Sommer) Clark brings sizzle to a play that at times is closer to a simmer...Mr. Lucas, like the two wars that have nurtured so many American tragedies, has not tied up his play like a cheery, neatly wrapped gift box. Life according to Lucas, whether in the city or suburbs, is too messy to be wrapped in tissue paper and neatly tied up with a ribbon.

Theatermania B+
(Dan Balcazo) Craig Lucas' thoughtful and engaging new play...may not satisfy all audiences. But for those who give themselves over to the style and message of the script, it contains plenty of rewards...The ensemble cast does a fine job under Sher's crisp direction...However, it is Clark's exquisite performance that leaves the most lasting impression -- and contributes greatly to the effectiveness of Lucas' drama.

New Yorker B+
(John Lahr) A game of hide-and-seek, in which the command of Lucas’s writing works as a kind of unspoken promise to the audience: in this series of opaque, impressionistic moments in one family’s turmoil, something will be found...He is trying to dramatize our psychic static, the perpetual, noodling back-and-forth between the conscious and the unconscious mind...If I got to choose, I’d want Victoria Clark on my team. At once delicate, alert, decent, and impish, she is an astute player, who makes an instant connection with the audience.

Hartford Courant B
(Malcolm Johnson) Set against a dark, romantic frieze of trees in the atmospheric set by John McDermott, who has also worked with Lucas and Sher at Intiman, "Prayer" unfolds as a strange tale of a love that dare not speak its name, even in the 21st century...The versatile Groff...gives "Prayer" a strong center which holds the play together and balances against the family scenes and Clark's ramblings as Dolores, who inherits a small fortune when her mother dies.

Village Voice B-
(Michael Feingold) Prayer for My Enemy often turns, like his best plays, enthralling, passionate, and articulate. But it also often feels contradictory and unclarified as it jumps almost nervously from topic to topic. What drives the evening, more than anything said or done onstage, seems to be Lucas's struggle to find the connections that give life meaning. That his methods visibly aren't working only makes the effort more grippingly painful. While hopelessly inchoate, the play also at times seems only a breath away from being a masterpiece.

Backstage B-
(David Sheward) With this loony bunch, Lucas is too obviously creating a microcosm of America. See how screwed up this country is, he metaphorically screams at us. Fortunately, Lucas has shuffled a joker in the pack--a character who is just as crazy as the family but in a different, subtler way. This is Dolores, played with a manic comic intensity by the heartbreaking Victoria Clark...I didn't quite buy the whole premise; the setup and playing out seemed too forced and theatrical. But director Bartlett Sher and his exemplary ensemble maintain a remarkably specific degree of verisimilitude.

The New York Times C+
(Ben Brantley) Provocative, confused and confusing...Scholars of this questing playwright’s work will find in it a significant and intriguing shift of tone. Average theatergoers, on the other hand, are unlikely to share the play’s spirit of forgiveness. For while “Prayer for My Enemy” dares to ask smart and hard questions about a homegrown violence that reaches from suburban backyards into the battlefields of Iraq, it often suffers from the same muddle-headedness that plagues its uneasy and uncertain characters. And though the production features several stirring and eloquent performances...it is ultimately too disconnected to move us as it means to...“Prayer for My Enemy” has more food for thought than a dozen average new American plays. The problem is that this production never assembles that food into anything approaching a digestible meal.

New York Post C+
(Frank Scheck) To say a play is too ambitious seems churlish, but "Prayer for My Enemy" fairly begs the criticism. This drama of family dysfunction deals with so many themes (principally the need for forgiveness) that it feels more overstuffed than revelatory. Add to that more interior monologues than have been seen onstage since Eugene O'Neill's "Strange Interlude," and you have one daunting evening...Under Sher's sensitive direction, the talented cast delivers flawless performances, and the play is obviously deeply felt. But "Prayer for My Enemy" is as messy as the lives of the characters it depicts.

New York C+
(Dan Kois) Alternates moments of high excitement with stretches of tedium...Lucas has his characters speak their innermost thoughts directly to the audience in the middle of scenes. It doesn’t quite work from a theatrical perspective – it’s confusing and saps the play of all subtext by making it plain old text – but at least it’s fun for his capable cast...Might best be remembered as the show with which relative newcomer Cassie Beck launched her career sky-high. Tart, sarcastic, and winsome all at once, her performance as Austin’s pregnant daughter Marianne is a marvel.

Variety C
(David Rooney) This attention-deficit therapy session is all jangled, raw nerves, never pausing long enough on any subject to settle on a lucid theme or establish a discernible point of view. Despite Bartlett Sher's customarily classy staging and a topnotch cast, most audiences will find themselves as unmoored as the characters...The most problematic aspect is the intrusive inner-voice elements, which either create confusion (is he/she saying that to the other characters or to us?) or spell out far too much...It may be the playwright's intention that the issues raised here are all but impossible to resolve, but it makes this a frustrating "Prayer" without an amen.

The Daily News C-
(Joe Dziemianowicz) Lucas constructs it so characters spend half the time passionately speaking their minds and spilling their guts to the audience, while keeping the chat polite and meaningless for friends and family. It's an interesting enough conceit, though at times you want to passionately yell at the stage - "Pick an idea and develop it!" Bartlett Sher...has shown he's a director with vision, but here his staging isn't compelling or clear. The cast is committed and works hard to make the most of their roles, some sketchier and more clichéd (like the Manhattan-phobic Dolores) than others. There's no doubt all six actors have better performances just down the road.

AM New York C-
(Matt Windman) About halfway through Craig Lucas’ new drama “Prayer for My Enemy" at Playwrights Horizons, we suddenly made the following quick prayer: “Please end this tortuous show as soon as humanly possible.” Unfortunately for us, the 100-minute intermission-less play continued to its full conclusion...Besides the sadness of every single character, there is not much of a plot. More often than not, you get the feeling that the playwright is rambling without focus...Still, we much give credit to Bartlett Sher for staging a handsome, nuanced production in spite of the play’s problems.

The Record D
(Robert Feldberg) Lucas is interested in big issues, but it’s hard to figure out what points he’s trying to make...Lucas puts on the table such topics as war, alcoholism, sexual identity confusion, the trauma of having an impaired child and all-around family dysfunction. But nothing sticks. I’ve rarely seen a play in which so much happens—offstage mostly—to such little effect...The sensation is of watching a play in a foreign language that you only somewhat understand. You get a general sense of what’s going on, but the essential details are missing.

Wall Street Journal D
(Terry Teachout) A mess, a mishmash of mawkish clichés that tries frantically to sound profound...Bartlett Sher's staging is cute and pretentious, just like the play.

Bloomberg News D-
(John Simon) The actors try to suggest the shift from dialogue to interior monologue (frequently within one speech) primarily through facial expression and body language. This doesn’t work at all and left me totally confused. Not that it mattered much, since I was equally unimpressed by the thoughts and the utterances...Why something that so manifestly cries out for Lucas’s drawer should be foisted on us for 100 intermissionless minutes, I can hardly explain.

Nytheatre.com A+ 14; Talkin' Broadway A 13; Newsday A- 12; American Theatre Web A- 12; Time Out NY B+ 11; CurtainUp B+ 11; New Yorker B+ 11; Theatermania B+ 11; Hartford Courant B 10; Backstage B- 9; VV B- 9;The New York Times C+ 8; New York Post C+ 8; New York C+ 8; Variety C 7; The Daily News C- 6; AM New York C- 6; The Record D 4; WSJ D 4; Bloomberg D- 3; TOTAL: 177/20=8.85 (B-)

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South Pacific

GRADE: A-


Music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, book by Hammerstein & Joshua Logan. Dir. Bartlett Sher. Lincoln Center Theater.

The long-overdue Broadway revival of this 1949 classic thoroughly enchanted all but a few stubborn holdouts with its lavish, intent design, the serious-minded direction of Bartlett Sher, its star turns by Kelli O'Hara and Paulo Szot, and the huge, lush orchestra. Most critics were almost surprised by the relevance and power of the original show, though some quibblers either found it dated and/or dissented from the general praise for the leads and the production's restrained approach.

The New York Times A+
(Ben Brantley) This “South Pacific” recreates the unabashed, unquestioning romance that American theatergoers had with the American book musical in the mid-20th century, before the genre got all self-conscious about itself. There’s not an ounce of we-know-better-now irony in Mr. Sher’s staging. Yet the show feels too vital to be a museum piece, too sensually fluid to be square...It’s as if a vintage photograph had been restored not with fuzzy, hand-colored prettiness but with you-are-there clarity...Mr. Sher and Christopher Gattelli, who did the musical staging, have reinvigorated the concept of the organic musical, in which song feels as natural as breathing...I know we’re not supposed to expect perfection in this imperfect world, but I’m darned if I can find one serious flaw in this production.

Variety A+
(David Rooney) From the seductive swell of a full orchestra playing the glorious five-minute overture through the poignant final tableau of love and reconciliation, this is ravishing theater...The keynote to Sher's approach is restraint. Nothing is pushed too hard in this naturalistic presentation, stripped of Broadway bravado, whether it's dramatic scenes, comedy or even the seemingly effortless vocals...All that quiet restraint serves to make the stealth-like, cumulative emotional power more overwhelming.

New York Post A+
(Clive Barnes) Bartlett Sher's masterly reinvention of Rodgers & Hammer stein's "South Pacific" opened at the Vivian Beaumont last night with enough wattage to keep Lincoln Center alight for years...The manner in which music and the original James Michener stories unfurl throughout in a mix of comedy, romance and a touch of tragedy is theatrical magic of the most beguiling kind...Sher has been helped here by Christopher Gatelli's boisterous but unobtrusive choreography, Michael Yeargan's beautiful settings...and Catherine Zuber's carefully accurate costumes...There's not a single weakness.

The Daily News A+
(Joe Dziemianowicz) What makes this impeccably acted and designed production so extraordinary is Bartlett Sher's meticulous and dramatic direction. The physical production is created on a grand scale...Against that Cinemascopic grandeur, performances are on a human scale. The show is filled with fantastic and familiar songs that are presented here like musical conversation, making them sound fresh and exciting. Characters are played with such intimacy you practically hear hearts flutter as people fall in love...As the Polynesian peddler Bloody Mary, Hawaiian actress Loretta Ables Sayre is the find of the season, completely convincing and hilarious.

New Jersey Star-Ledger A+
(Michael Sommers) Some enchanted experience, "South Pacific" returns to Broadway in as perfect a production as anyone is ever likely to see...Every second a masterpiece of exceptional writing, thoughtful showmanship and sterling performances.

Bloomberg News A+
(John Simon) Pays homage to the original production in all the right ways. It should easily play for at least 1,925 performances -- the length of the original Broadway run...Pretty Kelli O'Hara is deliciously girlish, with prance in her movements and glints in her glances...The Brazilian baritone Paulo Szot is surely the best Emile ever.

New York Sun A
(Eric Grode) A crisp, sumptuous, unabashedly emotional revival that finds an almost perfect balance between severity and opulence...Mr. Sher may provide plenty to look at and listen to, but his highest achievement is to make "South Pacific," just one year shy of its 50th birthday, feel younger than springtime — and every bit as welcome.

Newsday A
(Linda Winer) Director Bartlett Sher has masterminded a big, luscious, witty production with the emotional intimacy of a chamber musical...He locates the timely darkness in the 1949 Pulitzer Prize-winning war story about deep love and deep bigotry, courage and almost unbearable loss. Yet, he trusts the Rodgers and Hammerstein score and Joshua Logan's book with a touching sense of old-time wonderment.

The New Yorker A
(John Lahr) A majestic spectacle. Conjured by Michael Yeargan’s superb sets and Donald Holder’s evocative lighting, the romantic and rollicking nineteen-forties world comes to life. But there is nothing retro about the show’s debate. Now, as then, the nation is stuck on issues of race, war, and, as the musical puts it, a “thing called hope"...O’Hara is too classy and too knowing to fit the idiosyncratic comic contours of the role. This doesn’t impede her or the musical from getting over, but it lowers the temperature of the flamboyant end result...“People have a need for melody, just as they need food or personal contact,” Rodgers said. “South Pacific” ’s revival proves his point; it’s a banquet.

USA Today A
(Elysa Gardner) I doubt there has ever been a nobler or sexier Emile than Szot's. In addition to having the superior vocal power and presence necessary for Some Enchanted Evening and the heartrending This Nearly Was Mine, Szot brings the perfect balance of virility and decency to the role. He also manages a thrilling chemistry with O'Hara...Nellie provides another showcase for the luster of O'Hara's lower-to-middle register and the focused intensity and discretion of her singing, which in a better world would be required listening for all American Idol contestants (and for a few Broadway belters).

Associated Press A
(Michael Kuchwara) What makes this Lincoln Center Theater revival of the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II classic enormously satisfying is the extraordinary care given to the score of what is the most hit-filled show in the R&H canon...Director Bartlett Sher has done a masterful job in balancing story and song...And this "South Pacific" manages to soar most majestically when it sings.

Talkin' Broadway A-
(Matthew Murray) The most engulfing and enrapturing experience of this year - and quite a few others in recent memory...As directed with superb reverence by Bartlett Sher and performed by an astonishing company, this production speaks and sings to your heart in a way few shows today do...O'Hara...comes across as a graduate student in acting projecting careful introspection...Everyone else is spectacular.

Village Voice B+
(Michael Feingold) Lincoln Center Theater's revival of South Pacific, directed by Bartlett Sher, plumps for the work's seriousness, approaching it with quiet realism—almost cautiously, as if its romance might prove too fragile for our cynical time. But South Pacific has solidly built-in defenses against breakage, including the self-mocking lyrics in which Nellie ridicules her own romanticism. An additional pinch of that showbiz self-mockery wouldn't have hurt Sher's production, which at times seems too sedate...The physical production is, expectably, both lush and astute. And once the 31-piece orchestra lights into Robert Russell Bennett's orchestration, you won't mind much else.

Theatermania B+
(David Finkle) While Bartlett Sher's current revival of South Pacific...is not a perfect realization of the Richard Rodgers-Oscar Hammerstein-Joshua Logan musical, it's near enough that anyone caviling about its drawbacks for more than 10 seconds is just a spoil-sport...Sher...must shoulder responsibility for what many will consider a misconstrued interpretation of Nellie, who's far more restrained in O'Hara's performance than someone vociferously declaring herself "a cockeyed optimist" would likely be. Sher also might have helped Szot seem less awkward during the book scenes than he does; however, he spectacularly sings "This Nearly Was Mine" and "Some Enchanted Evening"...The musical -- coming during a presidential campaign where race is a heated issue -- now registers as indisputably relevant to the headlines.

The Hollywood Reporter B+
(Frank Scheck) This lavish production doesn't always succeed on a purely dramatic level, with the story line involving the major characters never quite connecting the way it should. But it does do full justice to the glorious score, and that's more than enough...The main performers simply don't bring the requisite charm to their roles; O'Hara and Morrison stress the seriousness of their characters' predicaments at the expense of much of their humor, and Szot -- an acclaimed opera singer here making his musical-theater debut -- sings gorgeously but delivers a hopelessly stiff performance...The physical aspects of the production are very effective.

Time Out NY B
(Adam Feldman) Everything about the production lovingly whispers “masterpiece theater” in your ear. But is South Pacific a masterpiece? The score is a treasure, certainly, but elements of this 1949 show’s depiction of military life now seem corny, as does the pedantic antiracism song “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught.” And although the strings beneath their dialogue signify romance from the start, there is something creepy about the rushed central relationship between American nurse Nellie Forbush (the lovely O’Hara, totally capable as always but a touch on the chilly side) and the wealthy, older French plantation owner Emile de Becque, who is looking for “someone young and smiling.”

New York B-
(Jeremy McCarter) Not detecting much chemistry between O’Hara and Szot is, I recognize, a minority view: If you missed the early notices, South Pacific led many of my colleagues to tear their shirts off and dance around. There’s a lot to admire in Bartlett Sher’s revival, if not as much as the hosannas might lead you to believe...But period flavor cuts both ways. Despite the best efforts of Danny Burstein, who got dependable laughs in The Drowsy Chaperone, the antics of fast-talking operator Luther Billis aren’t very funny. And despite O’Hara’s best efforts, the show’s vaunted wrestling match with bigotry doesn’t resonate either.

The Journal News C
(Jacques Le Sourd) For those who harbor a nostalgia for the grand old style of Broadway, it certainly won't be a wholly wasted visit. It just seems a shame that this classic show, so lumberingly directed, just never takes off.

The New York Times A+ 14; Variety A+ 14; New York Post A+ 14; The Daily News A+ 14; New Jersey Star-Ledger A+ 14; Bloomberg News A+ 14; New York Sun A 13; Newsday A 13; The New Yorker A 13; USA Today A 13; Associated Press A 13; Talkin' Broadway A- 12; Village Voice B+ 11; Theatermania B+ 11; The Hollywood Reporter B+ 11; Time Out NY B 10; New York B- 9; The Journal News C 7; TOTAL: 220 / 18 = 12.22 (A-)

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