Peter Viney's Blog

South Pacific
Music by Richard Rodgers
Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II
Book by Oscar Hammerstein II and Josh Logan
Adapted from Tales of The South Pacific by James A. Michener

Chichester Festival Theatre
Tuesday, 10th August 2021, matinee

Directed by Daniel Evans
Set and Costume by Peter McKintosh
Ann Yee- choreographer
Nigel Lilley- Musical Supervisor
Cat Beveridge- Musical Director

CAST

Gina Beck – Ensign Nellie Forbush (later it will be Alex Young, They are alternating)
Julian Ovenden – Emile de Becque
Rachel Jayne Picard – Bloody Mary, UNDERSTUDY, usually Joanna Ampil
Keir Charles – Seabee Luther Billis
Rob Houchen – Lt. Joseph Cable

with

Iroy Abesamis – Macel, Bloody Mary’s Assistabr / Seabee Juanito P Edora
Lindsay Atherton – Ensign Margaret Brooke
Carl Au-Stewpot
Rosanna Bates – Lt J.G. Bessie Mae Sue Ellie Yagar
David Birell- Captain Brackett
Leslie Garcia Bowman – Seabee John Paul Jones
Taylor Bradshaw – Seabee Buckley Johnson
Bobbie Chambers – Ensign Janet McGregor
Charlotte Coggin – Ensign Mary-Grave Mahoney
Danny Collins- Professor
Oliver Edward – Seabee Raymond Thompson Jnr
Sergio Giacomelli- Seabee Marco Messina
Shailan Gohill – Henry / Seabee Reginald Leone
Adrian Grove – Commander William Harbison
Zack Guest – Teoman Herbert Quale
Cameron Bernard Jones – Sgt Leon Francis Johnson / Seabee Victor Pric
Amanda Lindgren – Ensign Marie Louise Brown
Matthew Madison – Sgt Thomas Hassinger / Seabee Wlter Quayle
Sera Maehara – Liat
Melissa Nettleford – Ensign Cora McRae
Kate Playdon – Ensign Dinah Murphy
Pierce Rogan – Seabee Eugene O’Brien / Lt Buzz Adams
Clancy Ryan – Ensign Lilliian Keir / Dance Captain
Charlie Waddell – Seabee Jim Rose
James Wilkinson-Jones – Seabee Billy Belmont
+
Kids for Jerome and Ngana

Our first indoor theatre since the pandemic started. We decided the wide space and high roof of Chichester with its ample front of house areas (you can stand in the adjoining park in the interval) was the place to dip our toe in the water. It’s a strange sensation, after reviewing around forty to fifty productions a year for many years. What a fantastic performance to re-start with! Nothing ever beats live theatre.

We’d booked it for 2020, and I knew enough about the “Friends” booking system to book this production first of all, so we got front row seats. When it was postponed, Chichester held credit for us and on its eventual arrival on stage, assigned us the same day of the week, still front row. Just a year later. Front row felt good- fewer neighbours. Chichester staff went round reminding people to wear masks, with placards and announcements and it worked. The two next to us who weren’t wearing them, put them on. There were quite a few who ignored the requests though, all towards the sides.

I like reviewing stuff that YOU can see and in this case Chichester (CFT) are streaming South Pacific. You can see it. It is being streamed on:

14, 18, 21, 26 and 31 August, 3 September

Go to cft.org to book tickets. Some are afternoon BST, some are evening BST.

I’m going in a state of blissful ignorance. As elsewhere, I’d avoided mega musicals (except West Side Story) until Chichester really turned me onto them to the point where I’ll book whatever they do. Ignorance of South Pacific? It opened in 1949 and ran 1925 performances on Broadway. Well, it topped the first British album chart ever in 1958. In the history of album charts, its 287 weeks place it as fourth longest running ever. Even more, it is the ONLY album ever to have spent over one hundred weeks at the top of the British charts … ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN WEEKS.

My mum sang the songs from it and yes, I know the main ones. We did Some Enchanted Evening in a pantomime once, her favourite song. Um, but the pantomime dame did it, so as a send-up. She loved Happy Talk, Younger Than Springtime and I’m In Love With A Wonderful Guy. But I have never knowingly watched the film. I do remember in the days when I went to the local cinema once or twice a week that I saw the trailer many, many times. I suspect its blanket coverage of radio at the time, and repeated recommendations to watch it from an older generation put me off it.

I may be a very rare blank slate then. I didn’t even know the base story. To me, the American forces in the Pacific in World War II were best described in Norman Mailer’s The Naked and The Dead. This musical was based on James A Michener’s very different Tales of The South Pacific.

Chichester is three-quarters in the round, and for this they had a revolve stage, which they used a lot to great effect. The orchestra are hidden away above the stage. A cast of thirty-one on stage. They used a vast array of costumes, all clean and freshly pressed, meaning they have multiple sets, what with matinees.

We had an understudy for Bloody Mary – I would never have realized until I saw the sign in the interval. Gina Beck, as the female lead, Ensign Nellie Forbush, was visibly pregnant and they’re working in a replacement on alternate shows. We felt privileged to see and hear her. The smile does it all. Karen got really annoyed when Emile lit a cigarette near her (She’s pregnant!) but it was odourless electronic water vapour. And it must be in the script.

I’d been listening to the songs on YouTube before, including the original soundtrack, and Reprise covers with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Dinah shore, Sammy Davis Jnr. I wanted to be familiar. I have to say the arrangements, orchestration and presence meant this live show sounded WAY better than the originals or the famed covers.

From the programme notes, they took a fresh look at the orchestration and arrangements. Way, way better. The genius of the thing is how the melody lines keep repeating between songs and action, so the familiarity is constantly reinforced. A superb orchestra and the live double bass was stunning. I always listen to the bass … so was everything else.

THE STORY

For those as ignorant as I was. It’s the South Pacific in 1943. The American Navy is on an island, in a group of islands, some of which are Japanese occupied, so it’s the front line. There is a group of nurses on the island, and to protect them from the Seabees (or common matelots) every nurse is an “Ensign” a junior officer. Friends who worked on RAF bases teaching English in the Arabian Gulf told me they were ‘honorary lieutenants’ so they could be placed in the hierarchy.

There are two love stories. First, the leads are Ensign Nellie Forbush from Little Rock Arkansas (Gina Beck) and a French planter, Emile de Becque (Julian Ovendon). Emile is a widower who had to flee France after killing a local bully. He has two children, and his deceased wife was Polynesian.

A new arrival is Lieutenant Cable (Rob Houchen). He is due to set up a forward listening and observation post on a Japanese-held island nearby. He falls in love with Liat (Sera Maehara), a Polynesian girl. It was said of the film that the character had major impact with just four lines of script. An innovation in this production was to give her wordless dance sequences so that she becomes a definite character rather than a quiet stereotype. She opens and closes the show with solo dance.

Then we have the two comic leads. Luther Bliss is the unit wide boy and entrepreneur(Keir Charles is outstanding), running the laundry etc. A Sergeant Bilko character.

Then we have Bloody Mary, the local Tokinese entrepreneur, buying and selling grass skirts, shrunken heads, boar’s teeth bracelets. Bloody Mary is Liat’s mother. Add in the Captain and Commander,

All dream of Bali Ha’i, a nearby island where only officers can go. Also there is a great deal of comedy in the story.

The first act sets up the love stories. The second is the actual operation on the island … Emile and Cable go together after their respective love affairs both founder.

I’ll be careful with plot spoilers.

Luther Bliss reminds me very much of Catch 22, and Joseph Heller would have known South Pacific. Milo Minderbender is a descendant of Luther Bliss. Then Luther bails out of a plane into a rubber dinghy, which reminded me of Orr, who kept crashing into the sea, and surviving in a dinghy. He turned out to be practising his escape to neutral Sweden. Just saying. Luther also reminded me of my dad, his favourite TV show was The Phil Silver Show (Sgt. Bilko) and like Bilko he was in charge of the motor pool.

THE THANKSGIVING FOLLIES

All the way they mention rehearsing for the Thanksgiving Day show. The show is a classic “smoker” (the audience could smoke) or British ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association) travelling show, as immortalised in the Perry & Croft sitcom It Aint Half Hot Mum. The US forces must have had almost identical entertainments. The centre is a double cross-dressing drag act, with Nellie dressed up as a man, and Luther Bliss as an over the top woman. This was always a feature of such British shows, and dates back to Christmas pantomimes with The Principal Boy (a girl dressed as a man) and the Pantomime Dame (a man in drag … but obviously bad drag).

The story flicks between the show and Emile arriving with flowers for Nellie back stage, and makes use of the revolve stage. We can glimpse the action on the other side, and as it revolves between scenes the dancers file off into the wings of the theatre set in front of our eyes. This is so well done.

THE RACISM THEME

The programme addresses this, as do reviewers. That was the important thing about the original production, and it was deliberate by Rogers and Hammerstein.It is often said that the popularity of Gone With The Wind in 1939 created an anti-war mood that delayed the US entry into World War II. Was South Pacific instrumental in quietly chipping away the monolith of racial prejudice in the USA? Then West Side Story joined it in a second wave. It underlines the effect of popular culture.

Nellie is in love with Emile, but discovers his first wife was Polynesian. That repels her Southern upbringing. (Even at that long remove). She is placed as coming from Little Rock, Arkansas, which eventually was the scene of forced desegregation in schools.

Then Lieutenant Cable from Philadelphia cannot allow himself to marry Liat because she is Tonkinese, as is Bloody Mary. His folks back in Philadelphia wouldn’t accept it … note that Rodgers and Hammerstein hadn’t taken the simplistic “vilify the South” route. They knew that racism was a stain throughout the USA, not just the South. The key song is You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught, sung by Cable, in which he explains how attitudes were formed. Rogers and Hammerstein were told to remove the song and absolutely refused to do so.

Tonkinese? Liat and Bloody Mary are Tonkinese. Why not Polynesian (or Melanesian)? Tonkin is the northern part of Vietnam, so it was prescient. Tonkin was part of French Indochina from 1887 to 1946. By 1949 the French were already fighting the Viet Minh in Tonkin. The Tonkinese had been (taken / transported / persuaded to go) to the French Pacific plantations, much as many Indians went to British colonies in East Africa. The resonance into the 1960s is strange indeed, specially as the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 is famed for “justifying” the massive escalation in the Vietnam War. The explanation is that the musical is based on James A Michener’s Tales of The South Pacific, in which he intertwined fact and fiction. He was a senior naval officer, and had met the real Tonkinese Bloody Mary, probably on the island of Espiritu Santo. He based Emile on a real French planter he had met, and the Lieutenant Cable / Liat love story was based on an actual case.

SHRUNKEN HEADS?

At least one reviewer was uncomfortable with the shrunken heads (as racist) … Bloody Mary sells them, Luther Bliss tries to fake them. The thing is, it’s true. Between school and university, I worked for Bournemouth Museums. The Rothesay Museum (now a car park) had a collection of them in a glass case. I know because I had to carry Windolene and clean off the nose prints on the glass from school parties several times daily. The sign pointed out that the most valuable heads were those of chiefs, because they were heavily tattooed. Then it added that the Maori used to tattoo prisoners, so as to enhance the later value of shrunken heads sold to English visitors, then decapitate them and shrink them. Once one schoolkid had read the sign, the whole group would be scrambling over each other to see. Easily the most popular thing in both museums. No longer PC, I expect they’ve been returned and buried by now.

The heads may be problematic for a generation who are squeamish about the realities of history and want to pretend things never happened (my rant!). Let us not cast a stone at Polynesia. For centuries the heads of traitors were displayed on pikes in London until they rotted. After the Monmouth rebellion of 1685, Dorchester High street was lined with heads.

PROGRAMME

First rate. Informative and a bargain at £3.50, half of what we used to pay in London. If you stream the show, you can download a digital programme.

I hope Chichester put this on DVD / Blu-ray. They have the material from the streaming. I’ll buy one if they do.

MY RATING

I can’t think of a better production to return to live theatre. Magnificent singing, dancing and acting by all. There’s no argument (and now I’ll watch the film!)

*****

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

FIVE STARS
The Guardian, *****
Daily Telegraph *****
The Stage *****
Musical Theatre Review *****
Arts Desk *****
Theatrecat *****
GScene *****

FOUR STARS
The Times ****
Observer ***
Daily Mail ****
Mail on Sunday ****
What’s On Stage ****
Financial Times ****

LINKS ON THIS BLOG

DANIEL EVANS, DIRECTOR
This My Family, Chichester 2019
Me and My Girl, Chichester 2018
Quiz, by James Graham, Chichester 2017
Forty Years On by Alan Bennett, Chichester 2017
American Buffalo, by David Mamet, Wyndham’s Theatre, London

JULIAN OVENDEN
My Night With Reg, Apollo, 2015

KEIR CHARLES
Quiz, by James Graham, Chichester 2017 (as Chris Tarrant)
The White Devil, RSC, 2014
The Roaring Girl, RSC 2014
Arden of Faversham, RSC 2014