Critical Overview
Mister Roberts was greeted with praise by reviewers when it began its run on Broadway on February 18, 1948, at the Alvin Theatre. A typical reviewer comment appears in Irwin Shaw’s assessment of the play in New Republic: ‘‘one of the funniest plays ever seen on the American stage.’’ John Lardner, writing in the New Yorker, declares the play is ‘‘almost as good as it could possibly be.’’ It remains true to the ‘‘sardonic tone’’ of the novel from which it is adapted, says Lardner, as well as to its main point:
That a backwash war, funny and tragic as hell, was fought parallel with the shooting war; that the distance between the parallels could be five thousand miles in spirit as well as in space; and that the one kind of war damaged men who were caught in it as much as the other.
Lardner finds Roberts to be ‘‘a sweet and shadowy figure,’’ less satisfying a character than those characters around him, although ably portrayed by Henry Fonda. Lardner argues that the only flaw in the play is that—unlike the story line in the episodic, plotless novel—the playwrights felt obliged to ‘‘invent a situation to tie up loose ends,’’ and so came up with the plot centering around Roberts’s deal with the captain and his subsequent misunderstanding with the men.
John Mason Brown in the Saturday Review offers the opposing view that Mister Roberts is improved by its adaptation from novel into play. Although some of the characters in the novel were eliminated in the stage version, Brown thinks what was offered in their place more than makes up for the loss, while the play still retains the appealing simplicity of the novel. Brown admires the earthiness of the language and the skilful handling of ‘‘the affection that men feel for men,’’ an emotion often largely unexpressed. He singles out for particular praise the scene in which the men award Roberts the Order of the Palm. Brown also argues that although Mister Roberts might at times come close to slapstick, might lack importance, and is limited in emotional range by its fidelity to the young men it depicts, it is nonetheless highly effective in achieving what it sets out to do:
It is superlative theatre; a miracle of production in which the script, setting, acting, and direction all fuse to create one of the most uproarious, heartwarming, and yet touching evenings Broadway has yielded in many a long year.
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