Nellie and the middle-aged Emile are people of very different backgrounds, but the biggest obstacle to their relationship is Nellie’s revulsion over the fact that Emile has fathered biracial children. In Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific, as in the play, the most compelling story centers on the romance between Nellie Forbush, a young nurse from Arkansas, and Emile De Becque, a self-exiled Frenchman living on the South Pacific island now occupied by American troops battling the Japanese. The praise is well deserved for a play that in 1949 was far ahead of its time, but critics have failed to give sufficient credit to the person most responsible for the intelligence behind South Pacific-James Michener, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 Tales of the South Pacific provided Rodgers and Hammerstein with their story. But the most serious praise for New York City’s Lincoln Center revival stems from the way it deals with race. At this year’s Tony Award ceremony, it topped all musicals, winning seven awards. Reviving James Michener: The Relevance of South Pacific Nicolaus Mills ▪ Fall 1984įifty-nine years after its Broadway debut, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s South Pacific is once again drawing applause. It was at the 5th Avenue not that long ago, and it turns up in another year at the Paramount.Reviving James Michener: The Relevance of South Pacific "South Pacific" may be one of our most overexposed musicals. And with the help of costume designer Deborah Sorenson, he transforms the semi-drag show, "The Thanksgiving Follies," into an eye-popping spectacle. Terrell isn't afraid to turn "There Is Nothin' Like a Dame" into a sex-starved sailors' lament, complete with a finale in which the boys are all but trembling with lust. It also helps that Leilani Wollam's charismatic Bloody Mary is on hand to lure Cable into paradise with "Bali H'ai" and celebrate his union with her daughter in "Happy Talk." Joe Cable brings surprising tenderness to "Younger Than Springtime." He also does well by the anti-racism song, "You've Got to be Carefully Taught," that got "South Pacific" in hot water in the South in the 1950s. The other love story that runs through the show isn't as involving, but Douglas H. He smoothly handles the show's great love-at-first-sight ballad, "Some Enchanted Evening," and brings a profound sense of loss to the moving "This Nearly Was Mine". When the middle-aged French planter, Emile DeBecque, is charmed by her youth and optimism, you understand why, because Stefan Mitchell brings so much desperate passion to the part. When the irrepressible Amy Jo Diebold establishes Ensign Nellie's raised-in-Arkansas naiveté by declaring she's "stuck like a dope on a thing called hope," you know why she's so right for the role (and why Close was so wrong). The show had its share of sour notes and flubbed lyrics on opening night, but it's clearly headed in the right direction. Stephen Terrell, who directed last month's splendid 5th Avenue Theatre version of "1776," has once more done an admirable job of finding the right actors and the most appropriate singing voices, while establishing the pacing this particular musical requires. It has survived even an overblown 1958 movie version and last month's miscast television remake, starring 54-year-old Glenn Close in the ingénue role of Nellie Forbush.īut the way to see it is on stage - especially if its theatricality is embraced as lovingly as it is in Civic Light Opera's new production. Richard Rodgers once called his World War II musical about interracial romance, "South Pacific," one of the failure-proof shows he created with Oscar Hammerstein II. N.E., Seattle, Thursday night, last night and through May 19 (20). Presented by Civic Light Opera Jane Addams Theatre, 11051 34th Ave.
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