‘South Pacific’ sets sail at festival
There’s good news and there’s bad news: They just don’t write ‘em like “South Pacific” anymore.
The grand, old-fashioned musical may be showing its age (66 years), but the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s first-ever Rodgers and Hammerstein musical also shows there’s plenty of spark in the old show yet.
What’s always been great about “South Pacific” — especially its chock-full-of-classics musical score — remains so, thanks in large part to a bright, energetic cast. (That’s the good-news part.)
They’re so gung-ho they can sell pretty much anything, including “South Pacific’s” always talky, sometimes preachy — and occasionally clunky — book, which Hammerstein and co-adapter Joshua Logan (the show’s first director) based on James Michener’s “Tales of the South Pacific.”
Perhaps that confidence comes from the knowledge that director Brad Carroll’s calling the shots.
Back on musical duty after last year’s foray into frontier Shakespeare (an inspired, Gold Rush-inspired “Comedy of Errors”), Carroll gives “South Pacific” a fluid, almost-cinematic flow that helps offset the show’s traditional structure.
This production also demonstrates the vital role scenic and lighting design play in creating a convincing atmosphere, with Jack Magaw’s less-is-more sets and Kirk Bookman’s shifting, shimmering tropical skies (and waters) transporting audiences to two isolated South Pacific islands during World War II.
One of those islands, Bali Ha’i, looms in the background, whispering promises of mystery and romance (among other things).
The other serves as a U.S. military outpost, home to a variety of sailors, Seabees and Marines — led by the enterprising Luther Billis (the dependably goofy Aaron Galligan-Stierle) who agree that “There Is Nothin’ Like a Dame” — and bemoan the relative lack of said dames. Bloody Mary (boisterous yet cagey Christine Jugueta), a local Tonkinese wheeler-dealer, doesn’t count.
Neither do the Navy nurses stationed on the island — one of whom, “Cockeyed Optimist” Nellie Forbush (warm, vivacious Allie Babich), a self-described “hick” from Little Rock, finds herself charmed by French plantation owner Emile de Becque (dapper UNLV alumnus Michael Scott Harris), whom she first glimpsed one enchanted evening across a crowded room.
Yet (as Shakespeare always reminds us), the course of true love never did run smooth. Not for Nellie — and not for Marine Lt. Joseph Cable (earnest Nigel Huckle), whose passionate romance with Bloody Mary’s daughter Liat (Samantha Ma) could never survive outside the magical confines of Bali Ha’i.
But every time “South Pacific” starts to drown in its own well-meaning platitudes, along comes another knockout chorus number (“I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair,” “A Wonderful Guy,” “Honey Bun”) or swoony, soaring ballad (“Younger Than Springtime,” “This Nearly Was Mine” and, inevitably, “Some Enchanted Evening”) to remind us of “South Pacific’s” ageless appeal.
— CAROL CLING
