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...