Gina Beck becomes Mrs de Becque
in the beautiful South Pacific

“I know what you are against.  What are you for?”
Emile de Becque to the US Officer

When South Pacific first opened in 1949, the critics found the lyrics to “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught”,

” You’ve got to be taught, before it’s too late,

Before you are six, or seven, or eight,

To hate all the people your relatives hate…”                      to be too obvious and preaching. 

That would have been in New York.  However, when the show toured Georgia in the South, in 1953, a couple of state legislators tried to ban it, on the grounds that it had, “an underlying philosophy inspired by Moscow.” 

More recent productions have been nervous about how to stage Nellie Forbush’s initial shock that Emile de Becque has been married to a Tonkinese woman, as Nellie mistakes the father of the children to be his manservant Henry (Shailan Gohil). 

What Daniel Evans’s production does at Chichester is to firmly set the musical South Pacific in its historical context, in the 1940s, some twenty years before some of the Southern states of America condoned mixed race marriages.  No-one is saying this was right.  It was wrong.  But it was what happened then.  See another musical Show Boat. 

Daniel Evans’s production is a triumph!  From the opening overture performed as a ballet by the lone figure of Liat (Sera Maehara) to the parade of the US Marines on the circular stage we know we are in an island in the South Seas, invaded by the American military. 

The sets are special.  We switch to Frenchman Emile de Becque (Julian Ovenden)’s plantation villa with its bouganvillea covered terrace where the children play and sing “Dites Moi”.  Emile is entertaining an American nurse, Nellie Forbush (Gina Beck).   She explains her background as a hic in “Cock-eyed Optimist”  and asks him, whether like most planters, he is running away from a scandal. 

Hugely romantic, his voice soars with the song “Some Enchanted Evening” with no crowded room in sight.  Leaving this romantic bubble, we find the island entrepreneur Bloody Mary (Joanna Ampil) selling grass skirts to the SeaBees, or a shrunken head, probably borrowed from the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.  

The men explain what they are lacking on this idyllic island in the rousing “There is Nothing Like a Dame” choreographed with stunts and humour.  Bloody Mary answers with her mystical song about the island Bali Ha’I where rumour has it that the French planters have stowed their women.  The Seabee businessman, Luther Billis (Keir Charles) needs an officer to hire a boat to get to the island and fortunately new arrival, Princeton graduate, Lieutenant Joseph Cable (Rob Houchen) might help.  Cable sings about his girl back home. 

We are introduced to the US Army nurses who run through the audience in khaki uniform with matching khaki face masks.  The nurses in wonderfully accurate 1940s period swimwear take showers on the beach in makeshift shower cubicles, wire coat hangers to work the shower heads, drift wood stalls and grass matting panels for discretion in another design coup from Peter McKintosh.  Luther’s laundry supplies the towels.

As Nellie and the Ensigns sing “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair” de Becque calls and we have a reprise of “Some Enchanted Evening” and Nellie obviously didn’t use the right shampoo because her next song is “I’m in Love With a Wonderful Guy.”

Joanna Ampil as Bloody Mary (rear), Sera Maehara as Liat and Ronb Houchen as Lt. Cable (Photo: Johan Persson)

The lighting changes and the stage empties while baskets of lit candles are carefully placed to circle the revolving stage.  The flames flicker while Liat dances and Cable falls in love.  Rob Houchen’s beautiful voice comes into its own for “Younger than Springtime”.

Nellie drinks a lot of champagne (good thing she isn’t pregnant!) and she and Emile reprise “Wonderful Guy”, wake the children and Nellie learns whom the children belong to. 

Act Two is more about the war operation against the Japanese but first there is Bloody Mary acting as procuress for her daughter singing “Happy Talk” and Cable sings “Younger than Springtime” to Liat.

To a backdrop of a stage filling, slightly faded, grubby flag, like one of Jasper John’s paintings, is Nellie’s variety show for the troops, with her and Luther cross dressing for the number “Honey Bun”. The nurses are in Sailor’s outfits. Cable and de Becque are dropped behind Japanese lines to report on ship and troop movements and Peter McKintosh creates an imposing war room set with desks, desk lamps and radios with an aircraft in the hangar behind.  On their mission, Emile and Cable sing about racism in “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught”. 

Daniel Evans’s  production feels very fresh for a musical crafted in the 1940s and Richard Rodgers’s tunes are out of this world.  The plot too really works and I think it is because it was based on James A Michener’s 1947 novel Tales of the South Pacific.  The soundscape gives us aircraft, thunder and lapping waves and the lighting is exciting and used to change mood.

All the principals can act as well as sing.  Cable starts off looking very inexperienced and stiff, as he should as the newly appointed lieutenant, until his thrilling tenor voice takes over.  Julian Ovenden has credits as an actor and leading tenor and I could listen to his “Some Enchanted Evening” 24/7.  I have only seen Gina Beck before in Show Boat  but she has played all the major West End roles, Cosette in Les Mis, Glinda in Wicked, Miss Honey in Matilda and Christine in Phantom and also sung opera.

Book this show now!  See it on the revolving stage in Chichester with such good sight lines but it surely will come to London!  With so many smaller scale productions on in London after Covid, Chichester shows how it can be done with a large cast, a full orchestra and full bodied sets! This is the most polished, professional musical I’ve seen for some time with perfect singing and it deserves a five star accolade from Theatrevibe, the site that doesn’t do stars unless the show is really exceptional!

Joanna Ampil as Bloody Mary and the SeaBees (Photo: Johan Persson)

Musical Numbers

Act One

Prologue

Dites-Moi

A Cockeyed Optimist

Twin Soliloquies

Some Enchanted Evening

Finaletto

Bloody Mary

There Is Nothing Like a Dame

Bali Ha’i

Cable Hears Bali Ha’I

My Girl Back Home

I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair

Some Enchanted Evening  (reprise)

I’m in Love with a Wonderful Guy

Bali Ha’i  (reprise)

Younger Than Springtime

I’m in Love with a Wonderful Guy (reprise)

This is How it Feels

Emile’s Encore

Finale

Act Two

Opening

Happy Talke

Younger Than Springtime

Honey Bun

You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught

This Nearly Was Mine

Communication Discontinued

Dites-Moi (reprise)

 

Production Notes

South Pacific
Music by Richard Rodgers
Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II

Book Oscar Hammerstein II and Joshua Logan

Adapted from Tales of the South Pacific by Jams A Michener

Directed by Daniel Evans

Cast

Starring:

Gina Beck

Julian Ovenden

Rob Houchen

Joanna Ampil

Sera Maehara

Keir Charles

With:

David Birrell

Adrian Grove

Danny Collins

Karl Au

Rachel Jayne Picar

Iroy Abesamis

Shailan Gohil

Kate Playdon

Melissa Nettleford

Bobbie Chambers

Rosanna Bates

Amanda Lindgren

Clacy Ryan

Lindsay Atherton

Charlotte Coggin

Zack Guest

Pierce Rogan

James Wilkinson- Jones

Matthew Maddison

Taylor Bradshaw

Cameron Bernard Jones

Leslie Garcia Bowman

Oliver Edward

Sergio Giacomelli

Charlie Waddell

Archer Brandon/David Ngara-O’Dwyer/Alexander Quinlan

Ellie Chung/Lana Lakha/Kami Lieu

Creatives

Director: Daniel Evans

Designer: Peter McKintosh

Choreographer: Ann Yee

Musical Supervisor: Nigel Lilley

Lighting Designer: Howard Harrison

Sound Designer: Paul Groothuis

Musical Director: Cat Beveridge

Video Designer:  Gillian Tan

Original Broadway Orchestration: Robert Russell Bennett

New Orchestration: David Cullen

Additional Arrangements and Happy Talk Orchestrations:

Theo Jamieson

Information

Running Time: Two hours and 45 minutes with an interval

Booking to 4th September 2021

Also being live streamed to watch at home

details on cft.org.uk

Address: 

Chichester Festival Theatre

Oaklands Way

Chichester

PO19 6AP

Rail : Chichester

Telephone: 01243 781312

Website: cft.org.uk

Reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge at the

Chichester Festival Theatre at a preview performance

on 12th July 2021