Critics Agog Over South Pacific

The first Broadway revival of South Pacific opened last night, and the critics agree: It's outstanding. "Its brilliance hasn’t faded," Richard Zoglin writes in Time, calling the new production of perhaps the best Rodgers and Hammerstein collaboration “surprisingly fresh, astringent, meaty and convention-defying." Writes Ben Brantley of the New York Times: "I’m darned if I can find one serious flaw."

"This is a great staging of a great show," New York Post critic Clive Barnes writes of Bartlett Sher's direction of the 1949 show. Barnes awards four stars and raves, "There's not a single weakness." And Michael Sommers of the Newark Star-Ledger says the revival is “as perfect a production as anyone is ever likely to see.” (More Broadway stories.)