Reviews 2010
Reviews 2010
✭✭✭✭✭
by Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II,
directed by Bartlett Sher
Dancap Productions, Four Seasons Centre, Toronto
August 12-September 5, 2010
South Pacific is musical lovers’ paradise. Dancap has capped off the summer by presenting a flawless production of one of the greatest of all Broadway musicals. This Lincoln Center Theater revival, the first on Broadway since the musical’s premiere in 1949, won seven Tony Awards in 2008 and with good reason. Under Bartlett Sher’s clear, incisive direction, the work seems less like a typical musical and more like a powerful drama where characters’ emotions naturally escalate into song.
The show boasts and impeccable cast. Operatic baritone Jason Howard takes the role of Emile de Becque, a French plantation owner who falls in love with a navy nurse many years his junior stationed on the same South Pacific island during World War II. With his warm, rich voice Howard won ecstatic applause for “Some Enchanted Evening” and “This Nearly Was Mine,” two of famous songs that make up this lushly melodic score. As the Arkansan nurse Ensign Nellie Forbush, Carmen Cusack avoids the unthinking pertness often associated with the role and instead brings greater depth to a woman completely out of her element but strongly attracted to a man who represents everything foreign to her. She lends a sense of wistfulness to “A Cockeyed Optimist” and pure joy to “A Wonderful Guy.” In the parallel plot, Anderson Davis plays Lt. Joseph Cable, a marine whose brittle temper gives way once he finds the girl of his dreams on Bali Ha’i. He gives a glowing rendering of “Younger Than Springtime” and brings out all the anger in “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught,” the anti-racism song that Sher makes the central focus of the show. That people are taught hatred, not born with it, is a point that makes this musical so relevant.
For Sher this is a serious drama with comic interludes with Matthew Saldivar as Luther Billis and Jodi Kimura as Bloody Mary acting as the masterful comedians. Like Sher’s naturalistic, ungimmicky direction, the clean lines of Michael Yeargan’s set make this classic musical seem like someone took it off the shelf and dusted it off to make it shine like new. With a 26-member orchestra, the largest of any touring musical, the show looks and sounds like a sit-down production--but unfortunately it is not. It’s here only three weeks, so don’t delay if you want to enjoy this truly enchanted evening.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2010-08-18
Photo: Jason Howard and Carmen Cusack. ©Kim Ritzenthaler.
2010-08-18
South Pacific