Last week PBS aired a "Live from Lincoln Center" broadcast of SOUTH PACIFIC. This show with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan, debuted in 1949 and is considered by many to be one of the greatest musicals of all time.
It was revived on Broadway in 2008 and was initially supposed to be a limited run, but ended up going for two years -- it closed a couple of days ago, on August 22. The revival won seven Tony Awards when it opened and the original production won ten as well as the Pulitzer Prize. I watched the broadcast to see what was up, honestly thinking I would be kinda bored, regardless of the number of songs from it that have become classics like "Bali Ha'i", "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair", "Some Enchanted Evening", "There is Nothing Like a Dame" and "Happy Talk". Well, I was really charmed by it. I was also unaware of the fact that this show dealt with racism as much as it did. Pretty ballsy for a musical from the late 40's.
As you may have guessed, the setting is an island in the South Pacific during World War II. A young Navy nurse, Nellie Forbush, falls for an older Frenchman named Emile de Becque. I love how in musicals people can fall in love during the course of a two and a half minute song. Then there's the handsome Lieutenant Cable who arrives on the island to head a mission to try to spy on the Japanese. He's set up with Liat, the daughter of a Tonkinese "entrepreneur" called "Bloody Mary". Things go sour though when Nellie finds out that Emile has two children by his Polynesian wife who has since passed. Then those Little Rock roots come out and she starts to have second thoughts -- just as Lt. Cable has second thoughts about bringing a Tonkinese girl home. There's a song called "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught" where Cable explains to Emile that prejudice is not something you're born with -- it's something you have to learn. That song may seem a bit ordinary nowadays, but again, ballsy for its time.
