Ben Brantley's Review of South Pacific

April 4, 2008
THEATER REVIEW ‘SOUTH PACIFIC’
Optimist Awash in the Tropics
By BEN BRANTLEY
Love blossoms fast and early in Bartlett Sher’s rapturous revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific,” which opened Thursday at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. And while you may think, “But this is so sudden,” you don’t doubt for a second that it’s the real thing.
I’m talking partly about the chemistry between the production’s revelatory stars, Kelli O’Hara and Paulo Szot, in the opening scene of this tale from 1949 of men and women unmoored by war. But I’m also talking about the chemistry between a show and its audience.
For this “South Pacific” recreates the unabashed, unquestioning romance that American theatergoers had with the American book musical in the mid-20th century, before the genre got all self-conscious about itself. There’s not an ounce of we-know-better-now irony in Mr. Sher’s staging. Yet the show feels too vital to be a museum piece, too sensually fluid to be square.
I could feel the people around me leaning in toward the stage, as if it were a source of warmth on a raw, damp day. And that warmth isn’t the synthetic fire of can-do cheer and wholesomeness associated (not always correctly) with Rodgers and Hammerstein. It’s the fire of daily life, with all its crosscurrents and ambiguities, underscored and clarified by music.
During the past couple of decades directors have often felt the need to approach the Rodgers and Hammerstein classics with either a can of black paint or misted-up rose-colored glasses. (This has been especially true in London, with the National Theater’s celebrated darkness-plumbing productions of “Carousel” and “Oklahoma!,” and the current sugar-glazed cash-cow of a revival of “The Sound of Music” in the West End.) Mr. Sher, who heralded the return of full-blown lyricism to musicals with his exquisite production of Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas’s “Light in the Piazza” several years ago, puts his trust unconditionally in the original material.
It’s as if a vintage photograph had been restored not with fuzzy, hand-colored prettiness but with you-are-there clarity. Though Michael Yeargan’s perspective-stretching beachscape of a set isn’t photo-realist, you somehow accept it as more real than real, just as the score performed by the sumptuously full orchestra (with musical direction by Ted Sperling) feels from the beginning like thought made effortlessly audible.
Of all the Rodgers and Hammerstein hits “South Pacific” has in recent years seemed the least fit for revival, despite its glorious score. The show’s book, by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan, was inspired by James A. Michener’s “Tales of the South Pacific.” Set during World War II on two Pacific islands, where American sailors were stationed, it is Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most topical work, addressing a war that had ended only four years earlier.
It is also the show in which the creators wear their liberal consciences most visibly. In following two love stories, both between people of different cultures, “South Pacific” made an overt plea for racial tolerance. Few things in showbiz date more quickly than progressive politics.
It made sense that theater iconoclasts, including the Wooster Group (with its wry spoof “North Atlantic”) and Anne Bogart (with a notorious deconstruction set in a mental ward), would see “South Pacific” as a natural demolition target. Even Trevor Nunn’s generally generic restaging of the show for the National Theater had a gritty, sweaty style that brought out the frightened racism in the show’s heroine.
That’s Ensign Nellie Forbush, the Navy nurse from Little Rock whose romance with Emile de Becque, a French plantation owner, runs aground when she learns he had children with a Polynesian woman. The part was created by Mary Martin, playing opposite the opera star Ezio Pinza, and her avowed “cock-eyed optimism” became an emblem for postwar American hope and resilience.
Ms. O’Hara, who played very different incarnations of American womanhood in “Piazza” and the 2006 revival of “The Pajama Game,” doesn’t stint on Nellie’s all-American eagerness. But in a superbly shaded portrait she gives the character a troubled, apprehensive guardedness as well. This self-described hick’s Arkansas accent comes from the country club, not the mountains. And it’s all too easy to imagine her returning to a world of white gloves and cautious good deeds.
Yet Nellie is receptive not just to the serious charms of Emile (the seriously charming Mr. Szot) but to those of the lush landscape in which she finds herself. Ms. O’Hara, whose lovely soprano is never merely lovely here, creates a study in ambivalence that is both subtly layered and popping with energy.
Even when she’s singing that she’s in love with a wonderful guy, she seems to be wrestling with complicated feelings that have surprised her. The same rich sincerity pervades the deep-reaching baritone of Mr. Szot, best known here for his work with the New York City Opera. When he delivers “Some Enchanted Evening” or “This Nearly Was Mine,” it’s not as a swoon-making blockbuster (though of course it is), but as a measured and honest consideration of love.
This reflective aspect infuses every number; nothing is performed as a clap-for-me showstopper. Mr. Sher and Christopher Gattelli, who did the musical staging, have reinvigorated the concept of the organic musical, in which song feels as natural as breathing.
Even crowd-rousers like “Nothin’ Like a Dame,” sung by the chorus of Seabees (led by Danny Burstein, exuberant and infectious as the wily Luther Billis), are made to feel ordinary, as if part of a daily routine. When the entrepreneurial islander Bloody Mary (the Hawaiian actress Loretta Ables Sayre in a terrific New York debut), sings the familiar “Bali Ha’i” and “Happy Talk,” they feel new because they’re rendered as systematic acts of seduction.
You’re always conscious of the calculation in Bloody Mary’s eyes as she tries to secure Lieutenant Cable (Matthew Morrison) as a husband for her daughter, Liat (Li Jun Li, heartbreakingly fragile). Like Ms. O’Hara, Mr. Morrison (who played opposite her in “Piazza”) keeps us aware of just where his Ivy League marine comes from and how disoriented he is in a land of new and shifting rules.
The alluring and divisive shadows and light of the islands are beautifully accented by Mr. Yeargan’s adroit use of slatted screens to define interior spaces that can never entirely shut out the bright world beyond. (The impeccable lighting is by Donald Holder.)
I know we’re not supposed to expect perfection in this imperfect world, but I’m darned if I can find one serious flaw in this production. (Yes, the second act remains weaker than the first, but Mr. Sher almost makes you forget that.) All of the supporting performances, including those of the ensemble, feel precisely individualized, right down to how they wear Catherine Zuber’s carefully researched period costumes.
Notice, by the way, how Mr. Sher implicitly underscores the theme of racism by quietly having the few African-American sailors in the company keep apart from the others. And the production never strains to evoke parallels between the then and now of the United States at war in an alien land.
Above all, though, what impresses about this “South Pacific” is how deeply, fallibly and poignantly human every character seems. Nearly 60 years ago Brooks Atkinson, writing in The New York Times, described the show as “a tenderly beautiful idyll of genuine people inexplicably tossed together in a strange corner of the world.”
I think a lot of us had forgotten that’s what “South Pacific” is really about. In making the past feel unconditionally present, this production restores a glorious gallery of genuine people who were only waiting to be resurrected.
RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN’S SOUTH PACIFIC
Music by Richard Rodgers; lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; book by Mr. Hammerstein and Joshua Logan, adapted from “Tales of the South Pacific” by James A. Michener; directed by Bartlett Sher; musical staging by Christopher Gattelli; music director, Ted Sperling; sets by Michael Yeargan; costumes by Catherine Zuber; lighting by Donald Holder; sound by Scott Lehrer; orchestrations by Robert Russell Bennett; dance and incidental music arrangements by Trude Rittmann; production stage manager, Michael Brunner; associate producer, Ira Weitzman; general manager, Adam Siegel; production manager, Jeff Hamlin. Presented by Lincoln Center Theater under the direction of André Bishop and Bernard Gersten in association with Bob Boyett. At the Vivian Beaumont Theater, Lincoln Center; (212) 239-6200. Through June 22. Running time: 2 hours 50 minutes.
WITH: Kelli O’Hara (Ensign Nellie Forbush), Paulo Szot (Emile de Becque), Matthew Morrison (Lt. Joseph Cable), Danny Burstein (Luther Billis), Loretta Ables Sayre (Bloody Mary), Sean Cullen (Cmdr. William Harbison), Victor Hawks (Stewpot), Luka Kain (Jerome), Li Jun Li (Liat), Laurissa Romain (Ngana), Skipp Sudduth (Capt. George Brackett) and Noah Weisberg (Professor).
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