Review: Sher's 'South Pacific' is an enchanting evening

Performance review |

How could the Broadway musicals of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II be revolutionary? Most have been giant commercial hits, popular with mainstream audiences to this day.

And yet consider "South Pacific," the 1949 R & H classic now in a Tony Award-honored revival at the 5th Avenue Theatre.

As Geoffrey Block notes in the second edition of his astute book, "Enchanted Evenings," this musical about American soldiers based on a remote Pacific island in World War II broke new ground with such innovations as the "twin soliloquies" revealing fears and desires in song.

Novel too was having a middle-aged (and opera-trained) romantic male lead. And the graceful alternating of ruminations on love in a time of war and bigotry, with frisky humor and crowd-pleasing numbers like "There Is Nothin' Like a Dame," was also unorthodox.

The touring "South Pacific" at 5th Avenue (spun off from the show's first-ever Broadway revival, which debuted in 2008) has its own innovations.

The splendid staging by Intiman Theatre's ex-artistic head Bartlett Sher surpasses the many standard reprisals of the show — mainly in the way it reveals, intensifies and clarifies the R & H work without radically altering it. It's like the vibrant restoration of a faded tinted postcard depicting a locale that's exotic yet familiar.

The plot places young Americans Nellie Forbush (Carmen Cusack) and Marine pilot Joe Cable (Anderson Davis) in a scary and exhilarating foreign clime, as only war could do before jet travel was common. And it enmeshes them in urgent cross-cultural love affairs — Nellie with the Frenchman Emile (Rod Gilfry), Joe with a native girl, Liat (Sumie Maeda) — that provoke their prejudices.

Michael Yeargan's setting and Donald Holder's exquisite lighting evoke the sultriness and sunsets of a Polynesian isle far better than the usual painted backdrops do.

Rodgers' lush, melodic score, in its original arrangements, is played beautifully by the 5th Avenue orchestra. The drama of the incidental crescendos and sweeping melodies is fully exploited, as is the snappy exuberance of "I'm in Love With a Wonderful Guy" and "Honey Bun."

In this staging, the superb R & H score is sung robustly. And the tensions, longings and torments embedded in the Hammerstein-Joshua Logan script (based on James Michener's World War II memoir, "Tales of the South Pacific") are illuminated.

What's bothersome for some patrons (judging by my mail) is the touring cast.

Yes, the show's original lead couple, Brazilian opera singer Paolo Szot and Kelli O'Hara, had the most romantic/musical sizzle of any Emile and Nellie in memory.

By contrast, strapping Gilfry is a stiffer Emile — but his rich baritone envelops the "This Nearly Was Mine" and "Some Enchanted Evening."

Cusack neatly captures Nellie's girlish Arkansas charm and limitations. And this Texan lends an attractive twang to "Wonderful Guy" and other tunes.

Keala Settle's Bloody Mary is a grittier, more menacing hawker of grass skirts and "shrunken heads" than usual. But there's raw pathos in her rendition of "Bali H'ai," and maternal desperation in her aggression.

As a traumatized Cable, hunky Anderson Davis is an excellent voice for "Younger Than Springtime." And as the rascal sailor Luther Billis, Matthew Saldivar (who shone in 5th Avenue's "The Wedding Singer") reclaims his character's New York accent and street smarts.

The massive hype on this "South Pacific" may be a mixed blessing. Best to open one's ears and heart to this R & H voyage, as it sails on.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com