Clive Barnes

The talented Rachel Tucker has the thankless task of injecting some nuance into Tom’s blue-collar mistress, Myrtle. As the second act rumbles towards its melancholy conclusion, the songs grow ever more maudlin. By the time the revellers return for a reprise of Roaring On, the champagne has lost its sparkle.

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 (at the start, the thrust stage rolls back to expose the full and eloquent orchestra) and Catherine Zuber's carefully accurate costumes. Where Sher and Yeargan have been especially effective is in their sense of period, and, more important, a period filtered through the perspective of history. (Interestingly, although the races are carefully kept apart, the show updates the integration of the US Navy by a couple of decades.) This 'South Pacific' is not a faded photograph, but a modern etching.

It's certainly no rude 'Spring Awakening.' It's more like 'Guys and Dolls' seen through rose-colored Latino spectacles, with a little gambling (strictly legal), scarce sex (all of it straight) and no drugs. No cigarettes, either, come to think of it. Instead, it's a pretty picture postcard of Washington Heights - one with few lows.

Film musicals don't normally translate well into stage versions - think 'Singing in the Rain' - but 'Mary Poppins' doesn't simply translate, it transcends. This is a great show that, for first time this season, has Broadway singing again.

It's a Broadway commonplace that the most important thing about a musical is the book - but no one goes out singing the book, so it's a commonplace often forgotten. Then comes a show like 'Jersey Boys,' with a book, by Broadway newcomers Marshall Brickman (Woody Allen's one-time co-writer) and Rick Elice, that's as tight and absorbing as an Arthur Miller play, whipped up by director Des McAnuff into a controlled rock frenzy. That's when you realize just what a book can do. A glitzy, sleight-of-hand staging never hurt, either.

'Mamma Mia!' flies as tuneful as a lark and as smart as a cuckoo. It offers one of those nights when you sit back and let a nutty kind of joy just sweep over you... The true hero is British playwright Catherine Johnson, who took all these songs and cobbled a cohesive book around them. Genius. Phyllida Lloyd's staging gets the very last ounce of fun and sentiment out of the show - it's dazzlingly fast and breathtakingly simple - while Anthony Van Laast's choreography supports it at every turn.

Technically it is a piece of impeccably crafted musical theater, with theme, music and staging in perfect accord. They combine as a total statement that depends for its potency more on the sum of its parts than on the strength of any individual component.