Commander Harbison, the executive officer, tells Cable to go on leave until the mission can take place, and Billis obtains a boat and takes Cable to Bali Ha'i. There, Billis participates in the native ceremony, while Bloody Mary introduces Cable to her beautiful daughter, Liat, with whom he must communicate haltingly in French.
Believing that Liat's only chance at a better life is to marry an American officer, Mary leaves Liat alone with Cable. The two are instantly attracted to each other and make love " Younger Than Springtime ". Billis and the rest of the crew are ready to leave the island, yet must wait for Cable who, unbeknownst to them, is with Liat "Bali Ha'i" reprise. Bloody Mary proudly tells Billis that Cable is going to be her son-in-law. Emile introduces Nellie to Jerome and Ngana. Though she finds them charming, she is shocked when Emile reveals that they are his children by his first wife, a dark-skinned Polynesian woman, now deceased.
Nellie is unable to overcome her deep-seated racial prejudices and tearfully leaves Emile, after which he reflects sadly on what might have been "Some Enchanted Evening" reprise. It is Thanksgiving Day. The GIs and nurses dance in a holiday revue titled "Thanksgiving Follies". In the past week, an epidemic of malaria has hit the island of Bali Ha'i. Having visited Bali Ha'i often to be with Liat, Cable is also ill, but escapes from the hospital to be with Liat. As Liat and Cable spend more time together, Bloody Mary is delighted.
She encourages them to continue their carefree life on the island " Happy Talk " and urges them to marry. Cable, aware of his family's prejudices, says he cannot marry a Tonkinese girl. Bloody Mary furiously drags her distraught daughter away, telling Cable that Liat must now marry a much older French plantation owner instead. Cable laments his loss. For the final number of the Thanksgiving Follies, Nellie performs a comedy burlesque dressed as a sailor singing the praises of "his" sweetheart "Honey Bun".
Billis plays Honey Bun, dressed in a blond wig, grass skirt and coconut-shell bra. After the show, Emile asks Nellie to reconsider. She insists that she cannot feel the same way about him since she knows about his children's Polynesian mother. Frustrated and uncomprehending, Emile asks Cable why he and Nellie have such prejudices. Cable, filled with self-loathing, replies that "it's not something you're born with", yet it is an ingrained part of their upbringing " You've Got to Be Carefully Taught ". He also vows that if he gets out of the war alive, he won't go home to the United States; everything he wants is on these islands.
Emile imagines what might have been "This Nearly Was Mine". Dejected and feeling that he has nothing to lose, he agrees to join Cable on his dangerous mission. The mission begins with plenty of air support. Offstage, Billis stows away on the plane, falls out when the plane is hit by anti-aircraft fire, and ends up in the ocean waiting to be rescued; the massive rescue operation inadvertently becomes a diversion that allows Emile and Cable to land on the other side of the island undetected.
The two send back reports on Japanese ships' movements in the "Slot", a strategic strait; American aircraft intercept and destroy the Japanese ships. Nellie learns of Cable's death and that Emile is missing. She realizes that she was foolish to reject Emile because of the race of his children's mother. Cable and Emile's espionage work has made it possible for a major offensive, Operation Alligator , to begin. The previously idle fighting men, including Billis, go off to battle. Nellie spends time with Jerome and Ngana and soon comes to love them.
While the children are teaching her to sing "Dites-Moi," suddenly Emile's voice joins them. Emile has returned to discover that Nellie has overcome her prejudices and has fallen in love with his children.
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Emile, Nellie and the children rejoice "Dites-Moi" reprise. A number of songs were extensively modified or omitted in the weeks leading up to the initial Broadway opening. They are listed in the order of their one-time placement within the show:. The first Australian production opened in September at His Majesty's Theatre in Melbourne, playing for 10 months and performances.
It then played seasons in Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide until late , before returning to Melbourne for a further season. It was directed by Charles Atkin, and had costumes by Motley and sets by Mielziner.
There have been many stock or summer revivals of South Pacific. Nellie's pronouncement that she was from Little Rock was initially met with boos. Logan refused to allow Nellie's hometown to be changed, so a speech was made before each performance asking for the audience's forbearance, which was forthcoming. There were two revivals at Lincoln Center. Richard Rodgers produced the revival, which starred Florence Henderson and Giorgio Tozzi , who had been Rossano Brazzi 's singing voice in the film.
A new production with slight revisions to the book and score was produced by the Royal National Theatre at the company's Olivier Theatre in London for a limited run from December through April , timed to celebrate the centenary of Richard Rodgers' birth. The tour ended at the Cardiff New Theatre on July 19, This production was most noted for its staging of the overture, which charted Nellie's journey from Little Rock, Arkansas , to the South Pacific. On entering the theatre, the audience first saw a map of the U.
Bartlett Sher directed, with musical staging by Christopher Gattelli and associate choreographer Joe Langworth. With a few exceptions, the production received rave reviews. I know we're not supposed to expect perfection in this imperfect world, but I'm darned if I can find one serious flaw in this production.
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Yes, the second act remains weaker than the first, but Mr. Sher almost makes you forget that. All of the supporting performances, including those of the ensemble, feel precisely individualized, right down to how they wear Catherine Zuber's carefully researched period costumes. A production based on the Broadway revival opened at the Barbican Theatre in London on August 15, and closed on October 1, The production received mostly positive reviews.
K tour followed, with Womack, Ables Sayre and Ferns. Reviewers gave the original production uniformly glowing reviews; one critic called it "South Terrific". The new and much-heralded musical, South Pacific , is a show of rare enchantment. It is novel in texture and treatment, rich in dramatic substance, and eloquent in song, a musical play to be cherished.
Under Logan's superb direction, the action shifts with constant fluency.
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The occasional dances appear to be magical improvisations. It is a long and prodigal entertainment, but it seems all too short. The Rodgers music is not his finest, but it fits the mood and pace of South Pacific so felicitously that one does not miss a series of hit tunes. In the same way the lyrics are part and parcel of a captivating musical unity. It boasts no ballets and no hot hoofing.
It has no chorus in the conventional sense. Every one in it plays a part. It is likely to establish a new trend in musicals. Pinza's bass voice is the most beautiful that has been heard on a Broadway stage for an eon or two. Hers is a completely irresistible performance. When South Pacific opened in London in November , the reviews were mixed. London's Daily Express praised the music but disliked other elements of that show, writing, "We got a 42nd Street Madame Butterfly , the weakest of all the Hammerstein-Rodgers musicals.
I have nothing to do but thank Logan, Rodgers and Hammerstein and climb up from my knees, a little cramped from the effort of typing in such an unusual position.
A review asserted: At its State Theater revival, the show struck many as dated. I have to let people know the war wasn't a musical. People were so eager to obtain tickets that the press wrote about the lengths people had gone to in getting them. However, the parties who provided the scalpers with the tickets were never identified, and the show ran without interference. Rodgers became the first composer of musical comedy to win the Pulitzer, as composer George Gershwin had not been recognized for Of Thee I Sing.
The late Robert Russell Bennett was also honored that season for "his historic contribution to American musical theatre in the field of orchestrations, as represented on Broadway this season by Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific. Part of the reason why South Pacific is considered a classic is its confrontation of racism. Andrea Most, writing on the "politics of race" in South Pacific , suggests that in the late s, American liberals, such as Rodgers and Hammerstein, turned to the fight for racial equality as a practical means of advancing their progressive views without risking being deemed communists.
From the early drafts, Hammerstein and Logan made the issue of racial prejudice central to the story. Hammerstein repeatedly rewrote the Act II backstage scene where Emile, Nellie and Cable confront the question of the Americans' racism. Lovensheimer states that a postwar American audience would have found such onstage sentiments to be offensive.
In the staged version, Emile's expressions are limited to two lines arguing that prejudice is not inborn. At the heart of this scene is Cable's song " You've Got to Be Carefully Taught ", in which Cable realizes the sources of his own racism. Its frank lyrics made it perhaps the most controversial element of the show. When Michener told Hammerstein, he laughed and replied, "That's what the show is about! Judging by the letters that remain among his papers in the Library of Congress , the reaction was mixed.
One correspondent wrote "What can I say to a man who writes, 'You've got to be taught to hate and fear? Now that I know you, I feel that my informants didn't praise you enough. When the tour of the show reached a racially segregated theatre in Wilmington, Delaware , Rodgers and Hammerstein threatened to cancel the performances there unless seating was integrated, which it was. Two Georgia state legislators, Senator John D. Shepard and Representative David C.
Jones, objected to the song, stating that though South Pacific was a fine piece of entertainment, that song "contained an underlying philosophy inspired by Moscow", and explained, "Intermarriage produces half-breeds. And half-breeds are not conducive to the higher type of society. In the South, we have pure blood lines and we intend to keep it that way. The Northern press had a field day; Hammerstein, when asked for comment, responded that he did not think the legislators were representing their constituents very well, and that he was surprised at the suggestion that anything kind and decent must necessarily originate in Moscow.
In so doing, Nellie fails to live up to the American ideal that "all men are created equal", which Emile had earlier affirmed. This pronouncement, which makes Nellie less sympathetic as a character, was restored for the Lincoln Center production. But how can we love a racist? Nellie Forbush, in her journey from Little Rock, Arkansas, to serving as a Navy nurse and on to the domesticity of the final scene of South Pacific , parallels the experience of many American women of the period.
They entered the workforce during the war, only to find afterwards a societal expectation that they give up their jobs to men, with their best route to financial security being marriage and becoming a housewife. The male characters in South Pacific are intended to appear conventionally masculine. In the aftermath of World War II, the masculinity of the American soldier was beyond public question. Cable's virility with Liat is made evident to the audience. Although Billis operates a laundry — Nellie particularly praises his pleats — and appears in a grass skirt in the "Thanksgiving Follies", these acts are consistent with his desire for money and are clearly intended to be comic.
His interest in the young women on Bali H'ai establishes his masculinity. Meryle Secrest, in her biography of Rodgers, theorizes that South Pacific marks a transition for the pair "between heroes and heroines who are more or less evenly matched in age and stories about powerful older men and the younger women who are attracted to them".
He believes a different transition took place: He notes that both Oklahoma! Lovensheimer deems Allegro to be a transition, where the attempts of the lead female character to alter her husband Joe's world to suit her ambition lead to the breakup of their marriage.
He argues that the nurse Emily, who goes with Joe in his return to the small town where he was happy, is a forerunner of Nellie, uprooting her life in Chicago for Joe. Secrest notes that much is overlooked in the rush to have love conquer all in South Pacific , "questions of the long-term survival of a marriage between a sophisticate who read Proust at bedtime and a girl who liked Dinah Shore and did not read anything were raised by Nellie Forbush only to be brushed aside.
As for the interracial complexities of raising two Polynesian children, all such issues were subsumed in the general euphoria of true love. He claimed he had no thought of anyone else. According to Michener's autobiography, some variations in sequence of events Josh Logan read and loved "Tales of the South Pacific. They secured rights to the story quickly.
Josh Logan was under contract for directing and co-producing the play. He had just written and directed a big hit, Mr. Roberts , another story that poignantly but comically describes the loneliness, alienation, fear and boredom of sailors far from home. Logan had served in the military. Richard Rodgers approached Logan about assisting Hammerstein with writing the play. It turned out to be 10 days. Hammerstein worked on lyrics in the morning then in the afternoons and evenings, Logan and Hammerstein would read dialog into a Dictaphone which was transcribed later by their secretaries.
Hammerstein was to receive sole writing credit. Logan contributed a lot besides military information and became afraid he was being used. He asked Hammerstein about it who apologized and assured him he would share writing credit. Logan received a call the next day after Hammerstein saw his lawyer. Logan found out his lawyer had already signed the contract and Logan only had a few hours to sign or be dropped. Some aspects of Maori myth Tuhoe, the children of the Worlds in Collision and Ancient Catastrophes Revisited. For personal use only. All rights in images of books or other publications are reserved by the original copyright holders.
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