South Pacific

Festival Theatre Edinburgh - 25/10/22

Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre is the third last stop of the UK tour of South Pacific of the Chichester Theatre production from 2021. It’s been an overwhelming success with critics and audiences, and on its Edinburgh opening night was enthusiastically received at a well-attended performance.

Rodgers and Hammerstein in their 1949 musical wanted to send a strong progressive message on racism.  They did this in the stories of the wartime romances of two US personnel in the Pacific, Nellie Forbush, who discovers that her lover, Emile de Becque has two part-Polynesian children by his late wife, and Lieutenant Joe Cable who cannot bring himself to marry Liat, who is Tonkinese.  In a country where troops in World War II were racially segregated, this was powerful stuff.  Some theatre managements demanded change, especially in Joe’s bitter song about indoctrination, ‘You Have to be Carefully Taught’, and some in the South declined to show the musical.  The authors stood firm and on at least one occasion, they succeeded in ensuring that the audience was non-segregated. 

It's a terrific score of course – not a dud in sight – and director Daniel Evans and his team focus on excellent performances of the musical numbers, often with new and interesting orchestration (Jon Laird Musical Director and David Cullen Orchestrator).  At the same time, there’s been some re-thinking of the characters’ roles and the best way to make the historical setting comprehensible to a modern audience.  In practice this leads to a fast-moving production, greatly aided by a lovely flexible set. (Set Designer Peter McIntosh) Composed largely of corrugated iron (a frequently used building material in the tropics) the flats and walls are transformed by lighting to represent mountains half-hidden in vertically striped rain bursts or the stripes of rattan or bamboo walls.  There’s a revolving stage, aiding some swift scene changes and a sliding platform which can be moved speedily in and out.  The Seabees move around briskly in the high-kneed jogging movement, which the 1949 military adviser claimed was authentic.  (Movement and dance Ann Yee) Even the sound of the tropics, cicadas, lapping waves, and indoor fans, as well as the encroaching war are part of a subtle soundscape (Paul Groothius).

‘There is Nothing Like a Dame’, ‘I’m Gonna Wash that Man Right Outa my Hair’, and ‘I’m in Love with a Wonderful Guy’ are the highlights that they deserve to be, with some characterful individual performances by  chorus members.  Nelly Forbush (Gina Beck) leads the women’s numbers.  She’s an efficient nurse, tellingly from the US South, and is entirely persuasive in her changes of heart, culminating in the exhuberant five times repeated “I’m in love” at the end of the last number. (At its first run-through in Rodgers’ apartment, Mary Martin, the first Nellie, “sang the final 26 notes without taking a breath, and fell off her piano bench.  Rodgers gazed down at her, ‘That’s exactly what we want.  Never do it differently’”).

Beck’s relationship with Julian Ovenden as Emile le Beque, is more equal than usual.  He’s somewhat younger (Ezio Pinza, the original Emile was 59) and more relaxed.  I particularly enjoyed the way that the direction draws us into the domestic moments in his garden.  The dialogue is unforced and the musical numbers start in an almost conversational way.  A light touch with the orchestration helps, and a flowing andante for Some Enchanted Evening, turn it into a tender story rather than a stand and deliver number.  Ovenden’s flexible baritone with a very secure top is a delight, and the gentler approach to this music heightens the musical impact.  His Act Two number, ‘This Nearly Was Mine’, an impassioned soliloquy, is allowed the big treatment, to highlight an important turning point in the action.  The performances of both these actors hit the right spot at the emotional moments – there are a few hankies out at the interval and the end!

I was less convinced by the other romantic pairing.  Liat (Sera Maehara) has her role expanded.  She begins and ends the show, doing a solo dance as a casualty of the war, and later leads a balletic sequence with female chorus to ‘Bali Ha’i’. In her first scene with Cable, she dances to give a symbolic representation of love before he sings ‘Younger than Springtime’.  Many critics have been moved by these dances.  I’m afraid they left me cold, and diminished the impact of Cable’s solo.  Its pace seemed too fast and the words rather garbled.  A short sound outage at the beginning of Act Two caused an underpowered reprise as the lovers parted.  Rob Houchen, who has a very decent tenor, fared better in Cable’s honest attempt to get to grips with his racist upbringing in ‘You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught’.

I was confused by the portrayal of Liat’s mother, Bloody Mary, Joanna Ampil. Initially with tattooed face and strange clothing playing the comic entrepreneur selling miniature heads to the Seabees, she later emerges as a slim well-dressed mother, trying to make a good life for her and her daughter. Douggie McMeekin’s Luther Billis made the most of his laughs, his moments of pathos, and the revelation of his unforeseen courage under fire.

I very much enjoyed this production.  ‘South Pacific’, on film, in a memorable amateur production and on record was an important part of my musical upbringing.   Daniel Evan’s production pays homage to the original while honing its message for a modern audience.

It’s on at the Festival Theatre until Saturday 29th October, and then tours to Leeds Grand Theatre 1st to 5th November and to the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury from 15th to 19th November.