Aug. 16--"I wanted to meet different kinds of people and find out if I liked them," says Nellie Forbush early on in "South Pacific," explaining why she became a Navy nurse and ended up far away from Little Rock, Ark. The irony, of course, is that her attempt to explore diversity and friendship takes place against a backdrop of horrific warfare.
That irony isn't foregrounded in Rudy Hogenmiller's sturdy revival of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's 1949 musical (book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan, and based on James Michener's "Tales of the South Pacific") for Light Opera Works. Radical re-invention isn't on the boards at Cahn Auditorium. This isn't a different kind of "South Pacific" -- indeed, some of the cast is returning from the company's 2006 production.
But those outstanding returning players anchor a pretty good company. They include the stellar Larry Adams as Emile de Becque, the middle-aged French plantation owner who wins Nellie's heart -- and loses it when she discovers he has two children from a now-dead Polynesian woman. There's also Yvonne Strumecki as cunning but desperate Bloody Mary, the island native whose attempts to marry off her daughter to another young American rip open more layers of fear and prejudice. And I'd argue that -- minimalism be damned -- the lush romantic swoop and bouncy cock-eyed optimism of this Rodgers and Hammerstein score sounds best with a full 30-piece orchestra, conducted here as usual for Light Opera Works by Roger L. Bingaman.
Adams has also played Captain Von Trapp in "The Sound of Music" a few times, so knows his way around stories involving middle-age men with children wooing winsome younger women. But his Emile doesn't feel like an off-the-shelf matinee idol. There are early hints of a man who is still in flight from the ugliness of the world and who is finding that the trade-off of isolated security in an island paradise for a soul mate has started to take a toll.
Similarly, Strumecki also fleshes out the resentful woman who has decided that if the soldiers and sailors are going to take over her world, she might as well strike a bargain for her beautiful daughter, Liat (Victoria M. Ng) and get her in the hands of young and handsome Lt. Joseph Cable (Justin Adair). I'd never really thought of avaricious Bloody Mary as a more anodyne version of Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage," but there are moments in Strumecki's performance where her barely sublimated rage makes that seem possible.
Sarah Larson as Nellie takes a while to find her footing -- and in fact does so handily by the time she's washing that man right out of her hair. She brings a loose-limbed, eager-to-please physicality and charm to Hogenmiller's choreography, suggesting a coltish American girl who is comfortable in her skin, but uncomfortable with the idea of Emile having belonged to a woman with different skin before her. She also shows enough of Nellie's journey toward maturity for us to believe that she isn't just a "smart little girl with no heart" by the end.
Adair's Cable hasn't fully settled into his role. We need to see the moment when he realizes that the Bali Ha'i fantasy romance with Liat cannot survive his Philadelphia-bred, Princeton-educated WASP roots. I think this is where Hogenmiller's production could stand to break out more and play with some of the underlying unease created by both Bloody Mary's near-pimping of her daughter ("You like? You buy," she says to Cable) and Cable's own inability to honestly address those things he's been "carefully taught." This is, after all, a guy who arrives hellbent on a mission that he knows is dangerous -- and he chooses that over the love of a woman. Is the racial prejudice the real story, or is it a convenient cover for someone so in love with danger and duty that even a beautiful and adoring young woman can't shake him out of it?
The ensemble -- particularly the Seabees and sailors led by Brian Zane's ingratiating wheeler-dealer Luther Billis -- deliver high-octane takes on "There is Nothin' Like a Dame" and "Honey Bun." Adam Veness' flexible set, with its receding bamboo frames and backdrop of sky bleeding into sea, combined with Andrew H. Meyers' subtle shifts in lighting, create a world that is caught between the bright makeshift bonhomie of the sailors and nurses and the shadowy mystery and romance of the islands.
And when Adams' rich baritone rings out on "This Nearly Was Mine," you could feel the collective hairs raising on the necks of the audience in Cahn Auditorium. When all else is stripped away, you go to "South Pacific" to be reminded of the groundbreaking power of the mid-century American musical. Light Opera Works delivers that and makes us feel like we're in the company of a familiar friend.
Kerry Reid is a freelance critic.
ctc-arts@tribpub.com
3 STARS
When: Through Aug. 30
Where: Cahn Auditorium, 600 Emerson St., Evanston
Running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes
Tickets: $34-$94 at 847-920-5360 or lightoperaworks.com
