Culture Mom: Seeing Broadway's "South Pacific" Before It Closes

I had the most magnificent evening last week.  As a Lincoln Center Theater member, I managed to get a ticket to a closing performance of South Pacific before it ends its run on Broadway.  I remember when, three years ago, my sisters invited me to catch it early in the run, and I declined.  I'm not sure what my reasons were, or how I could refuse Rodgers & Hammerstein, but I'm certainly glad I that I didn't pass up the chance this time.

The original Broadway production of South Pacific opened on April 7, 1949, and won the Tony Award for Best Musical. The show, which tells the story of World War Two nurse Nellie Forbush (originally played by Mary Martin), who falls for a mysterious Frenchman, Emile de Becque (played by Ezio Pinza), while stationed on a Pacific island, ran for nearly five years and played 1,925 performances. The current Broadway revival opened at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater on April 3, 2008. The revival, starring Kelli O'Hara and Paulo Szot, won seven Tonys, including Best Revival of a Musical, and will close on August 22nd. 

I was totally enraptured for three hours.  Brilliantly directed and choreographed, this is a show that will stand out in my memory as one of the best shows I have seen in NY for a long time.  South Pacific is a play, not only about romance and war, but about prejudice and racism.  It was way ahead of its time and the issues still remain important ones that still exist in American culture. 

The score offers one great song after another and each transported me to another time, another place: A Cockeyed Optimist, Some Enchanted Evening, Bali Ha'i, There Is Nothing Like a Dame, I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair, A Wonderful Guy, Younger Than Springtime and This Nearly Was Mine.  

I feel so privileged to have witnessed the play's original stars who came back for the end of the play's run, Kelli O'Hara and Paulo Szot.  Their chemistry is real and beautiful.  I last saw O'Hara in Light in the Piazza in the 1990's and she was just as good now as she was then.  Szot is an opera singer and his ballads went right through my skin.

Tune into PBS to catch the magnificent revival of South Pacific airing on Live from Lincoln Center at 7 p.m. this Wednesday. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Source: http://theculturemomblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/culture-mom-my-cultural-week-broadways.html

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