South Pacific

Another night at the Arizona Broadway Theatre, this time to see Rogers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific. And another excellent production of what I now consider the best of the Rogers and Hammerstein collaborations, better than Carousel, Oklahoma, The King and I, and better than even The Sound of Music. The story is familiar to nearly everyone, based on James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific. There they were, Nellie Forbush, Emile De Becque, Luther Billis, and the best Bloody Mary since Juanita Hall made her so famous almost seventy years ago on Broadway. But the score is also so familiar to everyone. For the past week, every night when I found myself awake at my 3:00 a.m. witching hour, I would listen to those songs in my head. Way back when I was a boy, my sister took me to Chicago to see the first road show of South Pacific, and I was so entranced that I bought the album and memorized all the lyrics. Now, sixty-eight years later, I still know nearly all of them: “Some Enchanted Evening,” “A Cockeyed Optimist,” “There Is Nothin’ Like a Dame,” “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right outta My Hair,” “A Wonderful Guy,” “Younger Than Springtime,” and “This Nearly Was Mine.” In this strange 2017, with its renewed ugliness of racism and division, the song "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught," indicates that we still have a long way to go. Nellie at first decided she couldn't marry De Becque because of his fathering two children by a Polynesian woman. Lt. Joe Cable felt he couldn't marry Bloody Mary's daughter Liat and sings that we have to be taught to hate others who are unlike us, that bigotry and racism aren't attitudes we're born with but are carefully taught by those who should have done better by us. Are you listening, President Trump? The sets were simpler than what ABT usually puts up, but made effective use of netted curtains and various props. The only thing missing, something I wanted to see, was the image of Bali Ha’i on the blue backdrop as Bloody Mary sings “Bali Ha’i.” They could have easily used a scrim to slowly bring up the black outline of the island as Mary sings of the desert island's mystery that calls to us. The voices of the principals were all very good, especially that of Sean David Cooper, who played the French planter De Becque, and Kate Marshall, who played Nellie. From what I remember of that first Broadway cast, these two were as good as, maybe even better than, Ezio Pinza and Mary Martin. The only weakness in this production was the choreography. Everything else, though, was spot-on. I might even consider going back to see it again.