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SFist Reviews: South Pacific at the Golden Gate Theater

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Anderson Davis as Lt. Joseph Cable and Sumie Maeda as Liat
Theater fans may have heard about the 2008 Lincoln Center revival of South Pacific, which took home a bunch of Tony Awards including Best Revival of a Musical, Best Direction and Best Scenic Design. That production is now starting its national tour with a new cast, which kicked off this week at the Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco, and we can see what at least some of the fuss was about over the original production. It's a grand tribute to mid-twentieth century American musicals and boisterously faithful to one of the favorite scores of the genre. And with all its glorification of the unsung heroes who waited out much of WWII on quiet islands in the South Pacific, it gives modern audiences a glimpse of the rabid, just-post-war nostalgia for wartime stories that American audiences had in the late 1940s and 50s.

In this new cast, the shining stars are definitely Carmen Cusack in the lead role of Ensign Nellie Forbush, the hilarious Keala Settle as Bloody Mary, and the dashing Anderson Davis as Lieutenant Joseph Cable, whose tenor voice is as strong and tight as his abs. Also, the ensemble of male dancers who get to show off particularly in the first act, is super-talented and downright acrobatic.

While the play itself suffers a bit from the passing of time -- there is a fair amount of implicit and explicit racism in both the book and the lyrics, and we found the casting of operatic baritone Rod Gilfry as Emile deBecque rather awkward, even though the role is traditionally sung by just such a singer -- it's a fun romp back in time if you love old musicals and can set such things aside.

south-pacific-1.jpg The set design, adapted from Michael Yeargan's Tony-winning sets on Lincoln Center's thrust stage, are cleverly executed and wonderfully dynamic, but perhaps lost a bit of the depth and grandeur of the originals having to be squeezed onto a flat proscenium. And both Bartlett Sher's direction and Christopher Gattelli's choreography are faithful to the era without feeling anachronistic.

If you're one of those people who sang "Happy Talk" in a chorus in a middle school, or liked to listen to "Bali Ha'i" and "There Ain't Nothin Like a Dame" on your record player at home, you'll get a huge kick out of seeing this professional of a production.

Get tickets here.

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By Jay Barmann in on September 25, 2009 2:00 PM

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