Return to South Pacific

After two years I took an opportunity to return to SOUTH PACIFIC. I was elevated and entranced the first time around. Sometimes the show was thrilling. The cast was nearly ideal. The orchestra was big and beautiful. The collaboration between the director and the set designer was a brilliant fusion of creativity and storytelling. Now, I am sorry to say, the production is diminished. Some of the original cast members of the chorus and namely Danny Burstein as Billis remain, but in combination with the new cast members the show has the quality of a regional summer stock production. This wouldn’t be bad if the show weren’t on Broadway where the greatest talent in the world should be on hand to easily take over roles in a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. The current cast of SOUTH PACIFIC proves that casting this clasic show is never a snap. Although Loretta Ables Sayre is still in the show as Bloody Mary, she was out the night I was there and Liz McCartney was in the role. McCartney was just weird––in a kind of Kabuki character version. Sayre was authentic, McCartney is a minstrel show and charmless. When the show opened it had an exuberance to it that is missing now. The whole thing now feels like it is on a low wattage. Laura Osnes as Nellie Forbush was sweet and appropriate with a lovely voice and William Michals as de Becque looked right and sang it like we want to hear it, but there was no spark––no thrill. Andrew Samonsky is unusual as Lt. Cable, playing a “character” rather than seeming natural. He sings beautifully and acts his sickness with malaria with authentic detail, but he comes off as a bit of a comic book hero rather than a real person. The entire company sounds distant in the Vivian Beaumont Theater and I don’t know if the house has pocket area’s where the sound is lost or if the sound operator is asleep, but I felt the voices were being swallowed by the orchestra. This is not to say that the orchestra was too loud, it was not. In fact, I was surprised that the overture didn’t overwhelm me with sound as I felt it did the first time. It is strange to have to say this, but I think the show was under amplified. It isn’t just the sound operator though, it is very much the cast, which underplays the show and cannot fill the house. Only Danny Burstein is big enough to register really well. He has even expanded the comic aspect of the character and his humor plays better than it did two years ago. And now that I’ve complained about the demise of SOUTH PACIFIC I have to turn around and champion the overall show as being unmatched for the beauty of its design by Michael Yeargan as it melds with Bartlett Sher’s direction. I kept staring at that beautiful painted sky––it is one drop, but it transforms so much during the course of the show that it looks like it could be five drops. The balcony was mostly empty, so SOUTH PACIFIC might be on its last legs, and that’s fine for I am ready to see a new show on one of my favorite stages. Still, I walked out of the show wondering why no one can write a show that matches the combination of entertainment, social commentary, dramatic impact and beauty of a Rodgers and Hammerstein show. Those two men took their particular talents with them when they parted this world––so rarely are they matched. It was nice to have SOUTH PACIFIC back for a while.