BWW Reviews: Beautiful SOUTH PACIFIC Revival Sails Into OCPAC

You've got to be taught to be afraid / Of people whose eyes are oddly made / And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade / You've got to be carefully taught.

It's an alarming thought that these very same lyrics—first sung for public viewing back in 1949—still packs quite an emotional, visceral wallop in today's highly-charged geopolitical landscape. Though times certainly have changed from when the Greatest Generation showed true heroism in the battlefields of European and Tropical soil (kicking much axis ass in the process), which then gave way to the slow but steady openness of thoughts and ideologies, it's staggering to realize that in 2010, this conflict feels like a haphazardly patched wound reopened. Prejudice, no matter what the decade, still stings.

Perhaps this fresh exploration of such long-gestating heavy themes—coupled with its superbly creative, supremely vibrant restaging—is why this most recent, exquisite reboot of the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical SOUTH PACIFIC succeeds on so many levels. Directed with great intelligence and a fresh perspective by Bartlett Sher, this outstanding revitalized production—now playing for a strictly limited two-week engagement at the Orange County Performing Arts Center through October 24—not only handles the well-known property with beautiful precision and nostalgic care, it also presents it so authentically flavored with the lessons of history, in as much as you can in a frothy Broadway musical. When this show was first presented on the Broadway stage, only a few years had passed since the end of the Second World War. Today, armed with decades of knowledge and spatial distance, this wonderful, beguiling revival is so much more full-bodied than any production that ever came before it.

Based on James A. Michener's 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Tales of the South Pacific, the musical splices together a few of the interweaving storylines from his novel about the wartime occupation of this tropical region during World War II. The novel was later optioned for a stage production by librettist Joshua Logan, who co-wrote the book with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, featuring an impressive score by Richard Rodgers. The original Broadway production opened in April 1949 starring Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza, quickly becoming a critical and box office hit. Pretty much every single song in the musical—from "Some Enchanted Evening" and "There Is Nothin' Like A Dame" to "Bali Ha'i" and "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair"—have become classic standard staples in the Great American Songbook. In 1950, the musical itself won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and it also won all ten of its Tony nominations, including Best Musical, Best Book, Best Score, and all four of the acting Tony Awards.

The stories mostly revolve around the exciting new romance that has blossomed between cautious U.S. Navy nurse Ensign Nellie Forbush (beautifully rendered by former WICKED witch Carmen Cusack) and the more life-affirmingly emboldened French plantation owner Emile de Becque (impressive tour newcomer David Pittsinger). Their romance is troubled not only by the danger of worldwide conflict that embodies their surroundings but also by the noticeable gaps of age and studied sophistication between them. On top of that, they are also plagued by the perceived judgments of the public at large, especially when it comes to race relations.

Despite Emile's confession to her about killing a "bad man" back in his homeland (which has forced his life-of-blissful-exile in the South Pacific), Nellie remains faithfully in love with the much older, more cultured gentleman. A self-effacing "cock-eyed optimist" hailing from "the sticks" of Little Rock, Arkansas Nellie continues to buckle under his enchantingly romantic advances, even with little background knowledge of her new suitor. She briefly entertains to "wash that man right out of her hair" before once again joyously celebrating her love for Emile with her fellow nurses (in song, naturally). The shocking ultimate deal-breaker for Nellie, however, comes later, when she discovers that Emile had fathered two children (the adorable CJ Palma and Christina Carrera) with a native—now diseased—Polynesian woman. (There was an audible gasp from the audience when Nellie, speaking in the vernacular of the time, called Emile's dead wife "colored.")

Meanwhile, on the beach, there is another struggle of a different sort brewing: the endless waiting...and waiting...and waiting. When stuck in circumstances like these, one finds unexpected ways to make life here more like home. Situationally enterprising entrepreneur Luther Billis (Timothy Gulan)—the comic de facto ringleader of the rather bored American sailors and the proprietor of the local laundromat and "bath club"—is on the hunt for more exotic treasures of the area, items much more easily procured by a local Tonkinese peddler that the Seabees have affectionately nicknamed "Bloody Mary" (Jodi Kimura). Billis is desperate to explore the mysterious nearby island of Bali Ha'i, in the hopes of viewing first-hand the notorious Boar's Tooth Ceremony held only there. The island is also supposedly where the locals have banished all the young women in the region for fear of interaction with these anxious, horny American men. Together with close cronies Stewpot (Genson Blimline) and the Professor (Rusty Ross), they devise a plot to convince an officer—the only ones authorized to travel to Bali Ha'i—to take them with him.