In The Next Room or the vibrator play

GRADE: B-

By Sarah Ruhl, Directed by Les Waters. At the Lyceum Theater. (CLOSED)

It's odd that a playwright as good natured as Sarah Ruhl would end up being so controversial, but perhaps this is what happens when you're given a MacArthur "Genius" Award before making your New York Debut. In The Next Room or the vibrator play is Ruhl's first play written post-MacArthur (both Passion Play and Dead Man's Cell Phone were written just prior) and this time she's on the Great White Way with a comedy about the medicinal uses of the vibrator in the 19th Century. The play earns generally high marks, with critics admiring the way she and director Les Waters have simultaneously pulled off a hilarious comedy and a probing look into female sexuality and our relationships with our bodies. John Simon, who normally hates Ruhl, is shocked (shocked!) to find himself thoroughly charmed by the play. Not everyone is so content... Matthew Murray finds the play overstuffed, Linda Winer finds it overly slight and Terry Teachout hates it so much, he impugns the taste of anyone who likes it (leaving out his F- grade, the score jumps to B+).

Hollywood Reporter A
(Frank Scheck) The playwright, responsible for such works as The Clean House and Dead Man's Cell Phone, mines her subject for suitably bawdy humor without resorting to vulgarity. But what really gives the work its distinction is its sensitive exploration of the physical and emotional repression suffered by the women of the era, which has yet to disappear entirely. Nor does Ruhl neglect the male side of things, as evidenced by the beautifully staged final scene in which Mrs. Givings provides her husband with a lesson about the beauty of his own body. The play, seen at the Berkeley Rep, has been given a pitch-perfect Broadway staging that beautifully balances its humor and pathos. Under the sensitive direction of Les Waters, the ensemble delivers sterling performances, with Benanti a particular delight as the woman for whom electricity turns out to be a marriage saver.

New York Times A
(Charles Isherwood) In the Next Room, a Lincoln Center Theater production, is directed by Les Waters with a fine sensitivity to its varied textures. Insightful, fresh and funny, the play is as rich in thought as it is in feeling. It is also Ms. Ruhl’s most traditional work, taking place as it does in a single setting (realized with warmth by the set designer Annie Smart) and hewing closely to naturalism. Nonetheless, admirers of Ms. Ruhl’s fanciful imagination and flair for surreal imagery, given free rein in plays like The Clean House and Eurydice, will be gratified to know that she imbues her heroine, Mrs. Givings, with a penchant for flights of lyric fantasy and a tendency to speak her thoughts almost before she has formulated them.

NY Post A
(Elisabeth Vincentelli) Ruhl presents something a lot more intimate and a lot more daring: women's discovery of their own bodies and their own pleasure. It may be the first time we've seen characters repeatedly reach orgasm on a mainstream stage -- in a Lincoln Center Theater production, no less -- and it happens in a play that's smart, delicate and very, very funny...As well written as the play is, it could easily have gone astray in the wrong hands. But director Les Waters and his cast proceed with great sensitivity. Cerveris' earnest, slightly stiff physicality is put to good use here, while Benanti and Dizzia brim with a contagious glee in their shared scenes. Excited and curious, they giggle, whisper and intrigue. After all, their characters are on the cusp of a marvelous discovery: They were already adults. Now they can become women.

TheaterMania A
(David Finkle) If Henrik Ibsen and Oscar Wilde had decided to collaborate on a post-modern drawing-room comedy, the hotsy-totsy twosome surely would have turned out something very much like Sarah Ruhl's genuinely hysterical new work In the Next Room or the vibrator play, now being presented by Lincoln Center Theatre at Broadway's Lyceum Theatre... Handed material that theatergoers stuck in a bygone age might find unsavory, director Les Waters has honed it to a fare-thee-well. (He also helmed the piece for its Berkeley Repertory Theatre debut.) And his actors are certainly a game lot. Dizzia, Benanti, and Williams are obliged to present several approaches to orgasms, a requirement that may have evoked second thoughts on initial readings of the lubricious script. But they leap in. Cerveris, as a detached man of science, is adept at stripping his emotions bare and then some. Bernstine gets to deliver the play's longest speech -- a confession of her resentment at wet-nursing an infant after her own son died at 12 weeks -- and she breaks hearts with it. Ryan's thick-skulled Mr. Daldry and Stetson's secretly unhappy and longing Annie are additional assets.

Bloomberg A
(John Simon) Wonders will never cease. Sarah Ruhl, whose previous work I execrated, has written a smart, charming, iridescently funny-serious jewel, In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play...As Ruhl traces it with wit and insight, and without the slightest prurience, the birth of this new era gives rise to colorful events, astute psychological revelations and endearingly apt dialogue. A parallel plot line centers on the black wet nurse, Elizabeth: Catherine is as jealous of her success with Lotty as her husband is of his male patient Leo Irving, a bohemian, Paris-based painter with whom Catherine is unrequitedly smitten.

Time Out New York A-
(David Cote) This premise could easily devolve into a silly sex farce or a strident feminist critique; in fact, Ruhl samples from both without becoming indebted to either. In a way, In the Next Room is unabashedly antiscience; Ruhl has noted in interviews that she’s not impressed by psychological realism or rationality in contemporary plays. In the battle between reason and wonder, she comes down firmly on the side of dreamy awe. By restricting her genre to aphorism-peppered 19th-century drawing-room comedy, Ruhl tempers her tendency toward twee whimsy and delivers a compelling yarn with engaging characters who evolve. And director Les Waters doesn’t gild the lily of Ruhl’s heightened but period-respectful dialogue, setting a comical but grounded tone.

Associated Press B+
(Michael Kuchwara) This provocative, often quite funny play, which Lincoln Center Theater opened Thursday at Broadway's Lyceum Theatre, is Ruhl's most entertaining work to date. Not only because of its sexual subject matter but because she has created a parade of appealing, fully drawn characters, starting with the husband and wife at the center of her play. And Ruhl is dealing with some serious issues, too, most prominently the often difficult relationships between men and women and their misreadings of each other

Variety B
(David Rooney) Victorian repression gets a rude poke in Sarah Ruhl's typically idiosyncratic rumination on women's struggle to understand and explore their sexual selves, In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play. While the signature 19th century ailment being treated is "hysteria," the chief weakness is the bipolar disorder of the inconsistent second act, which shifts uncertainly between serious developments and the more farcical business of romantic cross-currents. But there are so many lingering moments of emotional truth, and even more of daring comedy, that the play amuses and charms even if it doesn't quite satisfy.

NY Daily News C+
(Joe Dziemianowicz) In the Next Room clicks, or hums, when it's at its silliest and most titillating. As characters shed corsets and knickers for some good vibrations, the play surges with laughter. The merriment ceases in the second half, larded down by so many themes concerning life, light, love, lactation, lesbianism - and that's just the L words.

Newsday C-
(Linda Winer) In the Next Room or the vibrator play is a great big idea with a mildly amusing play tacked onto it. The comedy is more substantial and less self-consciously whimsical than the three previous Sarah Ruhl plays that also have been luxuriously produced in New York in the past three years. But I still wish I understood the appeal.

TalkinBroadway C-
(Matthew Murray) Unfortunately, even these added layers of context and depth make the story difficult to sustain over two and a half hours. Sight gags about the stimulating devices - including the horrific “Chattanooga vibrator” to which Leo is subjected - and Catherine’s borderline conspiring to treat herself when her husband refuses may satisfy in the short term. But because the side plots and subsidiary characters aren’t especially compelling, you focus on the play’s coarser aspects more than they’re capable of bearing - and ultimately, they’re not much more than the sort of lame sex jokes most people get tired of after middle school. Counting adultery, classism, lesbianism, racism, artistic inspiration, the disintegration of social prudishness, the landscape of scientific progress, and a modern history of wet nursing in addition the dual-headed main story of vibrator theory and the accidental collapse of a marriage, Ruhl has loaded In the Next Room with too many expansive topics to do any of them justice. Neither she nor her director, Les Waters, is capable of drawing your attention to the threads of greatest importance, which instead of elevating everything only increases the insignificance of each individual portion.

The Faster Times D+
(Jonathan Mandell) All this is so clearly put forth that we get it within the first 15 minutes of the play — a half hour, tops. The problem is that the play is two and a half hours long. In that time, we watch nearly a dozen sessions with a vibrator (or maybe the better verb is hear, since they are conducted under discreet covering.) There are variations to be sure — one time it’s a man, a couple of times it’s two women. There are also tiny subplots, frustrated little efforts among various of the characters to make connection, and a fanciful ending that is at odds with the tone of the rest of the play, intentionally so. But much time is taken with the smug little joke that these naifs did not even understand that what they were experiencing was sexual pleasure, which might have been better-told as a 12-minute skit; allow the two musically-talented leads the chance to sing, and it would have been firmly in Monty Python territory. Instead, In The Next Room, or the vibrator play is a tease without titillation; it has the rhythm of pornography without the pleasures of pornography; most theatergoers would probably not find it very shocking, but for all the expressed intention to offer insights into attitudes towards sex and electricity, it is also not all that stimulating.

Wall Street Journal F-
(Terry Teachout) Believe it or not, this is actually a pretty good idea for a play, one that might have been both smart and provocative had it been treated in the astringent manner of "Topsy-Turvy," the 1999 film in which Mike Leigh showed us Victorian England through the eyes of Gilbert and Sullivan. "In the Next Room," by contrast, is a sentimental wallow studded with sniggering jokes that too often appear to be made at the expense of Ms. Ruhl's innocent characters, none of whom is believably Victorian in speech or carriage. The result is the theatrical equivalent of a jelly doughnut with vinegar-flavored frosting, a dish fit only for the tasteless.

HR A 13; TM A 13; NYT A 13; NYP A 13; BB A 13; TONY A- 12; AP B+ 11; V B 10; NYDN C+ 8; TB C- 6; ND C- 6; TFT D+ 5; WSJ F- 0; TOTAL: 123/13=9.46 (B-)

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Broke-ology

GRADE: B+

By Nathan Louis Jackson. Directed by Thomas Kail. At the Lincoln Center Theatre's Mitzi E. Newhouse Stage. (CLOSED)

Critics laud the gentle naturalism, humor, and sympathetic characters of Nathan Louis Jackson's Broke-ology and most only crave a more vigorous dramatic development to this timely story about poverty, health, and familial duty. With rare exception (Theatre Mania), the acting, direction, and design receive unqualified kudos, too. By all aesthetic standards, the production seems worthwhile. But since the title refers to "the study of being broke," one has to wonder for which audience this Lincoln Center production is intended. After all, $75 won't pay your health premiums, but it will get you a ticket to watch a Midwestern black family trying to do the same. The critical question seems to be whether this story has the power to dig deeper than a delicate study of poverty for its ostensibly well-off audience.

Associated Press A
(Michael Kuchwara) You probably can see where the play, which opened Monday at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, is going. If the conflict isn't new, Jackson's attempt to deal with some time-honored tribulations is surprisingly sturdy ... Jackson's dialogue is deceptively easygoing, as naturalistic as designer Donyale Werle's crowded and homey kitchen-living room set. And director Thomas Kail lets the play unfold at a leisurely pace. But don't let the evening's initial amiability and often humorous bantering fool you. Within the confines of this cozy setting, desperation is setting in, and Jackson mines it with surprising force.

New York Magazine A
(Stephanie Zacharek) ... Broke-ology is a lot funnier than it is grim, and director Thomas Kail (In the Heights) has made the most of the play’s buoyant spirit, even as he and his actors remain mindful of their characters’ pain ... Grand themes are touched upon, but Jackson’s terrific ear for dialogue keeps the play lively and fluid (one recurring bit has Ennis promising to chant “I love black people!” every time he uses the N-word). The title Broke-ology refers to Ennis’s amateur study of the science of having no money. But Jackson isn’t out to make the African-American Long Day’s Journey Into Night. These people are broke, not broken.

Time Out New York A-
(David Cote) This is the sort of unforced, unpretentious slice-of-life play that critics like me are bound to call “folksy,” with an aftertaste of condescension ... The devices by which most playwrights ratchet up excitement—clan secrets, crime, addiction or basic hatred between characters—are absent. In their place is ample proof that these men love each other and are trying to find a solution to their problems. But is it dramatic? With a cast this likable and with dialogue so free-flowing and humorous, the answer is yes.

Talkin' Broadway A-
(Matthew Murray) His showing how the same circumstances have incredibly different effects on three men from exactly the same background provides a fascinating window into a group that’s often portrayed as a monolithic entity. The play’s few missteps only occur when Jackson steps away from this, even for good reasons. A subplot about the boys kidnapping a neighbor’s garden gnome seems to belong in an entirely different play. And though Sonia is an energetically inspiring character, and the wonderfully vivacious Dickinson plays her with exactly the kind of clear-eyed but laser-focused mischievousness, her constant appearances to William after her death inject too much fantasy into a story that the rest of the time strives to maintain its overall grit. Director Thomas Kail has done commendable work throughout, compressing feelings and words into primed-to-bust packages, but he hasn’t managed to keep Sonia’s imagined resurrections from feeling like distractions.

The New Yorker A-
(John Lahr) What Jackson lacks in poetry and in stagecraft he makes up for in compassion ... Tender emotions are much harder to achieve onstage than pathological ones; it’s a pleasure to see goodness, not hate, dissected. Jackson’s dialogue doesn’t crackle, but it certainly pops with humor. An outstanding cast, which includes Crystal A. Dickinson, Francois Battiste, and Alano Miller, is headed by the poignant Wendell Pierce, as the declining patriarch William King, whose last act of love is to find a way to set his sons free.

Bloomberg A-
(John Simon) Jackson grabs and holds your attention. The dead Sonia is a dubious device, but what goes on among the three other Kings -- prime theater. It is greatly helped by the direction, acting, and Donyale Werle’s eloquent scenery. Thomas Kail elicits expert ensemble acting from a first-rate cast ... Most important, you will be amply rewarded for your patience. It is an evening to relish and long remember.

Variety B+
(Sam Thielman) Jackson, a writer for NBC cop drama "Southland," writes Ennis (Francois Battiste) and William (Wendell Pierce) with so much verve and pathos that passages dominated by one or the other practically sing. Malcolm (Alano Miller) is a more thankless part -- Jackson's efforts to give a reasonable voice to the single upwardly-mobile member of a poor black family fall flat, but it's gratifying at least to see the effort made in a world where Tyler Perry's more simplistic view rules the box office ... The play's final moments, which use the recurring hallucination of William's dead wife Sonia (Crystal A. Dickinson) to take the sting out of a questionable decision, seem to let everyone off the hook in a way that isn't true to the world Jackson has worked so hard to create. But the world itself is one worth exploring.

Village Voice B
(Alexis Soloski) The should-I-stay-or-should-I-go plot structure is grimly formulaic, and some of the scenes sag, but Jackson displays admirable tenderness, aided by Thomas Kail's sensitive direction. The play presents William's failing health as an unsolvable dilemma, but in some of Jackson's best scenes—a vigorous game of dominoes, a dance routine with a garden gnome—the playwright presents having and being a body as simply wonderful.

Backstage B
(David Sheward) Despite the weighty metaphors, this young playwright has created a striking portrait of four people yearning to escape their blighted neighborhood yet caught by necessities and obligations. Director Thomas Kail saves the production from sentimentality by focusing on the gritty reality of the action. Donyale Werle's detailed set is especially helpful here. Strewn with junk food, medicines, and a lifetime's bric-a-brac, this house feels lived in down to the scrubby patch of lawn on the stage's apron. The actors inhabit their roles with as much attention to specifics as the director and the designer display.

New York Post B
(Frank Scheck) What may sound like a downer isn't, thanks to the lively dialogue and episodes involving a giant garden gnome and an impromptu dance to the Temptations' "Just My Imagination." Based on the 30-year-old playwright's own family, the play has a deeply lived-in feel (Donyale Werle did the detailed set), though it fails to be galvanizing.

New York Times B-
(Charles Isherwood) Under the sensitive direction of Thomas Kail, the actors’ warm performances help compensate for the sometimes slack pace of the writing. Mr. Battiste is immensely appealing as Ennis, who is already compensating for the frustrations of his life by drinking a little too much and maybe even chasing after women who don’t plague him with demands. ... Mr. Miller portrays the conflict in Malcolm between his duty to his family and his hopes for himself with an affecting clarity and simplicity. Mr. Pierce (“The Wire”) is also fine as the father who is embarrassed at his physical frailty, but agonized at the thought that he has become a burden to his family, not the bedrock he had hoped to be.

Theatre Mania C-
(Dan Bacalzo) Battiste is the clear stand-out in the cast, capturing the humor of the play while also delving into depths of sadness and despair. Pierce has an engaging presence but doesn't always emotionally connect to the material. Miller plays his part too flatly, which is unfortunate as it's Malcolm's struggle to make a decision about whether to stay or go that is supposed to drive the play's action. Dickinson has the least to work with, but impresses in a scene in which Sonia flat-out tells William that the life she's living is not the one she wanted. Jackson writes engaging dialogue, but doesn't explore his theme of personal desire versus family duty in an interesting enough manner, and the play becomes predictable as the second act winds down. The unsatisfying ending seems particularly clichéd, even as it becomes theatrically inevitable.

AP A 13; NY Magazine A 13; Time Out New York A- 12; Talkin' Broadway A- 12; The New Yorker A- 12; Bloomberg A- 12; Variety B+ 11; Village Voice B 10; Backstage B 10; NYPost B 10; NYTimes B- 9; Theatre Mania C- 6. TOTAL: 130/12 = 10.83 (B+)

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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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Dividing the Estate

GRADE: B+

By Horton Foote. Dir. Michael Wilson. Booth Theatre. (CLOSED)

Though the tone of the praise is occasionally more reverent than revved-up, critics mostly hail Horton Foote's old-fashioned family comedy, transferred from last season's acclaimed Off-Broadway run at Primary Stages, for its sensitive humanism, the performances—particularly those of Elizabeth Ashley and Hallie Foote, the playwright's daughter—and its uncanny relevance to the current economic crisis. NOTE: The Hartford Courant's review was not graded, as it contained no discernible signs of evaluation.

Wall Street Journal A+
(Terry Teachout) It's a bitingly macabre comedy about a family of Texans who've been sponging off the money of their mother (Elizabeth Ashley) for so long that they've forgotten how to live their own lives...The best show now playing on Broadway, give or take Gypsy. Not only is it at least as good a play as August: Osage County, but this production, directed by Michael Wilson, is a stunner, a gorgeous piece of ensemble theater in which nobody puts a foot wrong.

The New York Times A
(Ben Brantley) Safely distanced by footlights, someone like Mary Jo, one of three squabbling siblings in Horton Foote’s tart and delicious Dividing the Estate, is heaven to be with. As played with true comic genius by Hallie Foote, the covetous, calculating Mary Jo has absolutely no sense of humor. But it’s hard to think of anyone on a Broadway stage right now...who’s funnier...This production...has ripened into an ideally balanced ensemble piece, with acting that matches and magnifies Mr. Foote’s slyly and acutely observant writing. A year ago Dividing the Estate was good, but a tad shaky in tone. This latest incarnation reveals it to be one of the masterworks of the 92-year-old Mr. Foote.

New York Post A
(Frank Scheck) This deeply humanistic and funny play is old-fashioned in the best sense. Director Michael Wilson's assured production features a wonderful ensemble cast whose seamless work feels even more lived-in than it did earlier...With death intruding not once but twice, there's an undeniable Chekhovian air to the proceedings. But it's alleviated by the richly comic, Southern-flavored dialogue and Foote's obvious empathy for all of his characters, even when they're behaving badly.

Bloomberg News A
(John Simon) Foote has over many years shown his ability to conjure up Texas milieus with his plays and screenplays redolent of everyday tragicomedy...Dividing the Estate is easily as good as, if not better than, his best earlier work...Dividing the Estate will draw you into its drawing room and the shadows beyond with the theatrical equivalent of a page- turner, capturing your undivided attention as you hang on its teasing turmoil in guiltlessly glad complicity.

Newsday A
(Linda Winer) Old-fashioned but bracingly unsentimental...Foote - 92 and definitely still counting - keeps adding to his remarkable stack of more than 60 intricately naturalistic scripts. Highlights in this one include his actress-daughter Hallie Foote, who descends on her mama's big old house with skinny-lipped buzz saw desperation. "I want everything," she snaps. "What do you want?"

Associated Press A
(Michael Kuchwara) Horton Foote's hilariously perceptive take on what good old-fashioned greed does to one cash-strapped Texas family...And while you think you may be getting a laundry lists of incidents recited by the more senior members of the household, the playwright has something more on his mind...There is a generosity of spirit in Foote's handiwork. He embraces all his creations, even the most mean-spirited of them. They are part of the fabric of everyday life in a small Texas town where such things as family squabbles over money are regular occurrences. And in Dividing the Estate, Foote manages to make them highly theatrical.

Backstage A
(David Sheward) There are showy parts and subtle ones, all played with honesty and precision and directed by Michael Wilson with a perfect balance of verisimilitude and theatricality...The play will probably turn up on the schedules of many regional and community theatres thanks to its single set (charmingly realized here by Jeff Cowie) and myriad meaty roles. Actors should take a gander for future employment opportunities and to see one of our finest authors near the top of his form.

Theatermania A
(Barbara & Scott Siegel) This work is not the little, quiet, and delicate dissection of Southern life and the people who live it that we've come to expect from this celebrated playwright. Instead, it's a southern gothic comedy about family and avarice that is full of well-earned belly-laughs. Who knew Foote could be this funny?

NY Observer A
(John Heilpern) Foote disproves the generalization that the skills of successful playwrights are at their juiciest in youth. To the contrary, the signs are that Mr. Foote’s energy and talent are unflagging...Mr. Foote’s writing is characterized by an unmodish sense of compassion and emotional restraint, and his language is everyday...The big ensemble of Dividing the Estate is well directed by Michael Wilson, who captures the shifting mood and nuances of the play beautifully.

New Yorker A
Horton Foote’s play about a Texas clan squabbling over finances moves to Broadway, and just in time: money-minded audiences will be pleased to know that the estate tax can be funny...What makes the play so charmingly batty is its obsessive-compulsive focus. The characters argue incessantly about dividing the estate, and not even the intrusion of death can stop them. Shrewd and admirably restrained, the play (directed by Michael Wilson) is quietly potent in its suggestion that cash is thicker than blood.

Variety A-
(David Rooney) A tart Chekhovian elegy for a disappearing way of life and a gentle skewering of complacent privilege...The well-worn scenario is familiar from more than one chestnut of Southern drama. But the playwright's work, as always, is distinguished by the delicate brushstrokes of his characterizations, making seasoned stereotypes human and giving even the most venal of them some hint of redeeming vulnerability. Perhaps even more essential to the old-fashioned play's appeal is Foote's deep understanding of the personalities within a precisely defined subculture. There's an exquisite balance between insidiousness and charm in this vipers' nest, and between affectionate anecdote and malicious gossip in their chatter.

The Record A-
(Robert Feldberg) Unlike many of Foote's plays, which have an aura of sad frustration, Dividing the Estate is a lively comedy, small in scale but with a surprising number of big laughs...Under the deft direction of Michael Wilson, Dividing the Estate glides along at an easy, unforced pace, with flavorful performances all around...The evening's highlight, though, is Hallie Foote, the playwright's daughter...Foote delivers a virtuoso comic performance that's worth the price of admission. Really.

The Daily News B+
(Joe Dziemianowicz) Ham, anyone? It's on the dinner table and at center stage in Horton Foote's Dividing the Estate, a lighthearted look at a fractious family facing financial straits and—Lord above!—each another...Under the deft direction of Michael Wilson, the actors are keener and the handsome production feels tighter...It's not as profound or ambitious as Broadway's other multigenerational melee, August: Osage County, but Foote's fine play does go down easy.

Time Out NY B+
(Adam Feldman) The eternally spry Horton Foote does a nimble Texas two-step in Dividing the Estate. Half the play is a leisurely, courtly, astutely observed portrait of cultural and generational change; the other half is a quick, lively comedy of manners and manors in decline...[Hallie] Foote—a specialist in her father’s work—pickpocketed the show Off Broadway as the tense and greedy Mary Jo, and now openly mugs it...But why complain? Foote is giving the comic performance of the season.

AM New York B+
(Matt Windman) In addition to its hearty laughs, Dividing the Estate is in fact a brilliant dissection of greedy family politics and the out-of-control economics that have caused our country’s current recession...Husky-voiced Elizabeth Ashley is stunning as she physically transforms herself into a female version of Big Daddy from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof...Michael Wilson’s production well-cast production displays pitch-perfect comic timing and nuanced characterization.

Nytheatre.com B+
(Martin Denton) In some ways, [Foote has] written the timeliest comedy possible, though stylistically it feels like a vestige of a long-ago age, the one Stella and Doug grew up in, when ladies always wore hats and gloves and one lifted one's spirits with a good old-fashioned hymn like "Rock of Ages"...Michael Wilson's staging feels a bit less urgent than it did last year; how much of this, I wondered, is due to the larger distances the actors now must traverse on the Booth Theatre stage? Foote has cut his play some since last year, too, excising at least one exchange that I enjoyed so well that I quoted it in my review.

Village Voice B
(Michael Feingold) A reassuringly solid piece of theatrical furniture offering both regional style and moderate comic flair. Foote's tragicomic tale of a land-poor Texas family's fiscal woes now looks prophetic as well as quaintly sturdy...As played under Michael Wilson's direction, everything onstage seems natural, especially Penny Fuller and Hallie Foote as the two bickering sisters. Only Elizabeth Ashley's cane-thumping matriarch seems as exaggerated on Broadway as it did in the show's Off-Broadway unveiling last season.

Philadelphia Inquirer B
(Howard Shapiro) So much family history runs through Horton Foote's comedy Dividing the Estate, so much who-died-how and who-dissed-whom, that it threatens to suffocate the plot...Given the opportunities for zingers, the play itself could be more amusing. Still, its character development gives Dividing the Estate the hook to hold us through an evening that examines tax dodges and falling land sales and, more to the point, the greed that sets a generation of beneficiaries apart from its forebears. The play uneasily straddles the divide between comedy and caustic comment, on Jeff Cowie's detailed and elegant multi-room estate set. What balance it has comes from a 13-member cast that gives the play a starkly realistic feel.

Talkin' Broadway B
(Matthew Murray) When Primary Stages presented the show in the fall of 2007 with largely the same cast, it made a virtue of compactness...But rather than becoming more powerful and hilariously tragic in its transfer, gaining strength and topical relevance from the imploding stock market and the catastrophic housing crisis too reminiscent of the Gordons' Texas turmoil of 20 years ago, Dividing the Estate has grown colder and more distant...Many of the performances that were impeccably cut jewels Off-Broadway have had facets cracked by the now-necessary shouting and by the wear and tear of time.

USA Today C+
(Elysa Gardner) The folks we meet in Estate...can be immensely irritating, but they're not, well, bad people—or, truth be told, terribly interesting ones. That is the conundrum facing Michael Wilson, the director of this Lincoln Center Theater production, and his cast. If Estate's genial spirit is key to its charm, its lack of bite poses a considerable challenge...Wilson culls fine, unfussy performances from the company...Though these actors haven't the ingredients to cook up a truly meaty evening of theater, their resourcefulness—and Foote's grace—provide a mild kick.


The Journal News C-
(Jacques Le Sourd) Basically, a family sits around the dinner table, and its members claw at each other verbally for a couple of hours...You'll probably spend at least the first third of the play figuring out all the familial relationships in a large cast. These are not the fun Southerners of Tennessee Williams, who drink a lot. These people are abstemious, which makes them considerably more boring than other species of characters.

New York D+
(Stephanie Zacharek) The characters speak urgently and repeatedly about the need to “divaaahd the estate”—it takes them a while to get the phrase out, although not quite as long as it takes to actually divide the estate. The idea is that we’ll laugh at the family’s eccentricities and foibles, even as we sense their suffering...The whole enterprise has the feeling of a worn-out rug that’s been hung up for beating too many times. Dividing the Estate is harmless fun, which is good news only for those who fear being harmed by fun.

Wall Street Journal A+ 14; The New York Times A 13; New York Post A 13; Bloomberg News A 13; Associated Press A 13; Backstage A 13; ny Observer A 13; Theatermania A 13; New Yorker A 13; Variety A- 12; The Record A- 12; The Daily News B+ 11; TONY B+ 11; AM New York B+ 11; Nytheatre.com B+ 11; Village Voice B 10; Philadelphia Inquirer B 10; Talkin' Broadway B 10; USA Today C+ 8; Journal News C- 6; New York D+ 5; TOTAL: 248 / 22 = 11.27 (B+)

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Saturn Returns

GRADE: C

By Noah Haidle. Dir. Nicholas Martin. Lincoln Center Theatre. (CLOSED)

(Critic-O-Metered by Isaac Butler)

Noah Haidle's Saturn Returns, a memory play about three moments in a man's life and the three different women who impacted them, gets a real B- consensus from the critics, dragged down by John Simon's F- review. Most critics are taken with the conceit--the man is played by three different actors, while the three different women are played by one actress--but ultimately find the play a little shallow given the big-ticket themes it plays around with. The result: respectful but not especially enthusiastic notices.

The Canadian Press B+
(Unsigned Review) At barely 80 minutes, Haidle's tale is really more of a dramatic vignette, but it artfully covers a lot of territory in its intertwining of three stories about the same man, at three 30-year intervals in his life—ages 28, 58 and 88.

NY Daily News B
(Joe Dziemianowicz) As the 75-minute one-act ends, one wound is literally closed and another salved. If some events leading up to this encounter are a little contrived, the cast, the wonderful McMartin and Benton have made you care enough about their characters that you're happy to go with it.

Newsday B
(Linda Winer) The title is more cosmic than the drama in Saturn Returns, Noah Haidle's small and odd character study about three stages in the life of a radiologist in Grand Rapids, Mich. If not for a program note explaining the supposed impact of the planet's 30-year rotation, we would be left to appreciate the 70-minute play as just a chance to watch the wonderful John McMartin and James Rebhorn portray an elegant but childish, self-involved and needy widower in his 80s and his 50s, respectively. This is not an insignificant pleasure...But Haidle...here gives us quirky characters with quirky names (Gustin and Zephyr, anyone?) whose quirkiness is not quite its own reward.

NYTimes B-
(Charles Isherwood) Mr. Haidle's time-bending structure is formally elegant, and his use of recurring motifs in the dialogue to underscore the inevitability of loss in life is artful too. But his grasp of tone is slippery. The melancholy note the play strives for often sharpens into something more like sourness, despite a touching performance from John McMartin as the 88-year-old Gustin Novak of Grand Rapids, Mich., who tramps around his decaying mansion (evocatively designed by Ralph Funicello) with, for companionship, the specters of his former selves and of the women he loved and lost.

TheaterMania B-
(Patrick Lee) Noah Haidle's best known plays, like Mr. Marmalade and Rag and Bone, are absurd black comedies. Conversely, his newest work, Saturn Returns, currently at the Lincoln Center's Mitzi Newhouse Theatre, is an uncharacteristically wistful and mostly straightforward memory play. Although both too slight and overlong at just 70 minutes, it's a gently touching work, which Nicholas Martin's first-rate production showcase to fine advantage.

Backstage B-
(David Sheward) Despite the gimmicky nature of the script, Haidle penetrates to Gustin's heart and shows how our actions and habits can echo across the years. Director Nicholas Martin elicits sterling and sensitive performances and avoids Hallmark-card sentimentality creeping into the proceedings.

Variety B-
(David Rooney) Haidle pushes too hard for humor, resulting in a certain fussiness to the dialogue. But while its emotional impact is too subdued to be satisfying, this is a more soulful effort than the playwright's grating Mr. Marmalade. With its repeated talk of birds migrating, winter arriving and night falling, the play captures the cycle of sadness, memory and unbreakable relationship patterns with quiet reverberations—even if it lacks the depth of insight to shed fresh light on its existential issues.

TalkinBroadway B-
(Matthew Murray) Saturn Returns, for all its honesty and beauty, doesn't linger long enough on anyone or anything for us to feel as deeply for its characters as they supposedly do for each other. Haidle has the beginnings of a real winner here, but needs to remember exactly what he wants to impart to us: Whether you have 30 years or 30 seconds, make every moment count.

The Record C-
(Robert Feldberg) The structure of Noah Haidle's Saturn Returns is considerably more interesting than its content.

Time Out NY C-
(David Cote) Haidle has an ambitious structural idea: We see a man’s life in intense, personality-defining vignettes, as he looks back ruefully on his younger self. It worked quite well for Dickens, but then, Charlie had Scrooge. Haidle’s Gustin is a sorry coot, with little substance beyond neediness, stubbornness and a tendency to wallow in self-pity. Nicholas Martin’s production for Lincoln Center Theater is predictably comfy and classy (to its detriment; a harder, minimalist treatment would add some heft to the text) and the performances are carefully rendered...For all involved, it must be a neat technical workout, but from the aisle, it seems like a lot of cold clockwork.

NY Post D+
(Frank Scheck) A disappointingly slight work depicting three stages in the life of the curmudgeonly Gustin, a doctor living in Grand Rapids, Mich...The conceit, while imaginative, provides little in the way of dramatic returns. The series of losses that permeate Gustin's lonely existence don't carry much cumulative emotional weight, and the elaborate structure framing them is more gimmicky than illuminating...Director Nicholas Martin has elicited terrific performances from the ensemble, particularly the ever-reliable McMartin.

Village Voice D+
(Michael Feingold) Saturn, a slow-moving planet, supposedly produces a changed consciousness of life when it enters your astrological chart, about once every 30 years. But Haidle's hero—played by three fine actors at 28, 58, and 88, respectively—remains the same stodgy, sardonic, otherwise traitless person throughout, while one appealing actress, Rosie Benton, tries to nudge change out of him as his wife, daughter, and home health aide. Short (75 minutes), slight, and sentimental, the play's tidy cleverness seems as vapid as its hero.

Bloomberg F-
(John Simon) Saturn Returns, however, has the distinction of being the dullest, most pointless piece the venerable Lincoln Center Theater has foisted on us in a very long time.

Canadian Press B+ 11; Daily News B 10; Newsday B 10; NYTimes B- 9; TheaterMania B- 9; Backstage B- 9;Variety B- 9; TalkinBroadway B- 9; The Record C- 6; Time Out NY C- 6; Village Voice D+ 5; NY Post D+ 5; Bloomberg F- 0; TOTAL: 90 / 13 = 6.92 (C)

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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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