South Pacific brings ‘Happy Talk’ to WAC’s Broadway series | Opinion

Total score: 4.5 grass skirts out of 5

[Disclosure: I received a free ticket to attend South Pacific Tuesday night. This ticket was given to me because of my participation in the Walton Arts Center's "Blog for Broadway" contest. The blogger whose review receives the most "likes" on the Walton Art Center's Facebook page will be given a free season pass to the Broadway series. I invite you to read all of the submissions and vote for the one you think is best.]

By Christopher Spencer

There’s a reason Roger and Hammerstein’s 61-year-old musical South Pacific still wins standing ovations on stages across America.

It’s a darn good love story. In fact, it’s a two-for-one deal, though only one couple gets the proverbial “happily ever after” moment.

Add the sultry, seaside backdrop of Polynesian islands during World War II – complete with equal dollops of racism, colonialism and idealism – to the gooey romantic center, and you get an idea of why South Pacific is repeatedly resurrected as a revival and spawned a 1958 and 2001 film.

But South Pacific’s success and popularity might also be its weakness.

The 1949 Tony-winning musical was candid and challenging during the immediate post-war era, but now feels at times ossified and quaint for those looking for more rebellious theater fare, such as The Wooster Group’s North Atlantic.

Tuesday night’s performances were flawless. The production values were amazing. This is a traveling Broadway performance of the highest caliber and the evening delivered with classic tunes such as “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair,” “Bali Ha’i,” “Some Enchanted Evening,” and “There is Nothing Like a Dame.”

And my new favorite “Happy Talk”

It was easy to hear the contented sounds of pleased theater-goers after the performance. Words like “great” and “amazing” were spoken several times.

T.J. Barnes and his wife, Dina, attended Tuesday’s performance. They saw South Pacific for the first time on their second date and have seen it several times since.

The couple originally lived in Chicago but moved to Northwest Arkansas in 2003. They’ve purchased season passes at the Walton Art’s Center each year since.

“They are consistently great,” said T.J Barnes about the WAC’s Broadway offerings. “It gives us that city edge.”

This three-hour musical packs a lot of punch. The actors are accompanied by an orchestra and the music reverberates with pitch-perfect clarity.

The set pieces are also stunning, evoking sandy beaches and employing lighting stagecraft to great effect. For example, during “Bali Ha’i” the mysterious titular island comes into hazy focus on the backdrop when dusky purple-pink light is applied and fades from sight when the lights are raised.

During the ever-popular “Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair” a make-shift shower is brought on stage and employed as an effective and wet set piece.

This sort of stagecraft wizardry creates an immersive atmosphere which transports the audience with greater finesse than any LCD screen or 3-D mimicry.

The leads, army nurse Nellie Forbush (played by Carmen Cusack) and world-weary French ex-pat Emilie de Becque (played by the Grammy-nominated singer Rod Gilfry) convey so much emotion in their songs you’d almost think it was opera (but in a good way). Their romance for one another unfolds, falls apart and is renewed in music.

Forbush is a ‘hic from the stick’ of Little Rock and Cusack plays the lines to great effect in front of a Fayetteville crowd. Later, the association doesn’t feel quiet so welcome once the audience realizes that the charming and naive Forbush is actually an unapologetic (but not ultimately unredeemed) racist.

“This is something that’s born in me,” she says.

And that’s 1949 dialogue, years before Arkansas cemented it Civil Rights reputation during the 1967 Central High Crisis.

Princeton-educated Lt. Joseph Cable (played by Anderson Davis) and the Tonkinese islander Liat (played by Sumie Maeda) form the second couple. Their tryst reveals more about the expectations of class, colonialism and station than the overt racism of Forbush and Becque.

Liat is little more than a prop, both literally on stage with almost no lines, and figuratively as her mother, Bloody Mary (played by Keala Settle) pushes the two together to build a better life for her family.

See “Happy Talk” above. By the way, Settle turns in a scene-stealing top-notch performance.

It’s the interactions between these four characters that provides most of the grist for the South Pacific story.

The war, epitomized in Capt. George Brackett (played by TV’s Gerry Becker), is a constant presence but only serves a resolution role at the end of the show. The entreprenuerial and womanizing sailer Luther Billis (played by Matthew Saldivar) provides much of the welcome comic relief, including several sight gags.

South Pacific is a pastiche of stories from James Michener’s Pulitzer-winning Tales of the South Pacific about life during the war in those island locales. This tale of beauty, love and war is pushed against the Paradise-like backdrop of Polynesia through the skillful and creative weaving together of these tales. It creates an artistic work greater than the sum of its parts.

Much like the grass skirts which figure prominently in South Pacific and were a favored memento among military men.

South Pacific continues till Sunday. Tickets cost between $40.50 to $68.50 and are available at the Walton Art Center’sWeb site.

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