Matthew Saldivar as Luther Billis and The Seabees in a scene from South Paciific
South Pacific
- Music by Richard Rodgers
- Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II
- Book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan
- Directed by Bartlett Sher
- Starring Carmen Cusack and Jason Howard
- At the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto
For a long time, Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific had the reputation of being, in the words of one of Nellie Forbush's songs, as "corny as Kansas in August," but not since Bartlett Sher's sensitive and soaring 2008 revival of the Pultizer Prize-winning musical at New York's Lincoln Center Theatre.
Reconfigured for the road, Sher's production has lost little of its beauty or power. Presented with a full orchestra in Toronto's Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, the touring production certainly doesn't feel like a touring production.
Led by Carmen Cusack as a charming, understated Ensign Nellie Forbush, the cast have top-notch voices, but also are serious actors. Anderson Davis's conflicted Lieutenant Cable - who is, indeed, in the words of Blood Mary, "damn sexy" - is a stand-out, while baritone Jason Howard's Emile de Becque comes to full bloom when he delivers his operatic, deeply moving account of This Nearly was Mine.
Set on a small island held by the Americans in the middle of the Second World War, South Pacific has one of Richard Rodgers's most unforgettable scores - Some Enchanted Evening, Bali Ha'i, Younger than Springtime and so on - but here it is Oscar Hammerstein II and Joshua Logan's script that gets its rightful time in the spotlight.
Written in 1949, Hammerstein and Logan's adaptation of James A. Michener's Tales of the South Pacific views the American contribution to the war with a clarity that is missing from many subsequent fictional accounts that either succumb to Greatest Generation romanticism or are too influenced by skepticism toward the USA's Cold War military activities.
The musical opens during a pessimistic moment during the war before the momentum decisively swung in the Allies' favour. Nellie complains about how everyone around her believes it is the "end of the world" and "the human race is falling on its face." When trying to enlist civilian Emile for a dangerous mission, Captain George Brackett tells him not only can't he promise that his action will do any good, he can't even promise him a better world if the Allies win.
South Pacific's plot explores the contradictions of a group of Americans ostensibly fighting for the belief that "all men are created equal" (a credo Emile quotes to prove which side he is on) and yet unable to accept people with a different skin colour as equals at all.
"Knucklehead" Nellie's romance with the French plantation owner Emile is smooth sailing until she discovers his half-Polynesian children from a previous marriage, while Cable halts his love affair with an uncomfortably young local named Liat (Sumie Maeda) - Sher doesn't whitewash the wonderful, but undeniably creepy song Younger than Springtime - because he can't imagine ever bringing her back to Philadelphia.
Without ever being heavy-handed about it, Sher's detailed production intelligently mines the simmering racial and class tensions among the troops stationed in the South Pacific to contextualize the main conflicts.
Even in a funny, energetic song like There is Nothing Like a Dame, a cluster of black Seabees mostly stays apart from the white ones they are harmonizing with - reminding us that, though there were experiments with desegregation during the Second World War, particularly in the Navy, president Harry S. Truman didn't order the integration of the armed forces until 1948.
Matthew Saldivar's wildly malapropism-prone Luther Billis, meanwhile, is more than just comic relief - here's a working-class guy well aware that his military rank (and inability to seriously woo Nellie) largely has to do with his accent and economic and educational background. Of course, he forms the closest bond with Bloody Mary (Jodi Kimura) - the Polynesian merchant who's causing an "economic revolution" on the island, because she pays the locals more to make souvenirs for the soldiers than they earn working on the plantations.
What's great about Rodgers and Hammerstein's brand of liberal, populist entertainment is that it never judges its characters. Both Nellie and Lieutenant Cable can be heroes despite their prejudices, which many of the show's first audience members would have shared. The only one who angrily and didactically chastises Cable for his racism is Cable himself, when he sings in self-disgust, "You've got to be taught to hate and fear."
Sher's is the definitive production of this American classic. Catch it in Toronto this month or New York before it closes on Aug. 22 - or, if you're in neither of these two cities, on PBS's Live from Lincoln Center on Wednesday (Aug. 18). (Check your local listings.)
South Pacific continues at Toronto's Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts until Sept. 5. ( www.dancaptickets.com).
J. Kelly Nestruck