Yes, that boy is me. Only 28 years have passed, but that is me as Emile de Becque and Stacey London as Nellie Forbush. (please note the gold chain...)
I saw South Pacific last week at Lincoln Center. I am writing a bit feverishly literally - so I'll tell you what comes to mind most profoundly, rather than focusing too much on the LCT production: I grew nostalgic and then found myself musing on the hilarity of the Middle School musical.
South Pacific, Elkins Park Middle School, circa March 1980:
I have no recollection that we had a discussion about anything that the play deals with - the war, the politics, the history, the racism. No - we just staged the thing and performed it, i guess. I suppose there's nothing wrong with choosing a play which requires casting a 13 year old bar mitzvah boy as a 45 year old french plantation owner (and baritone).
Of course, this was 1980 in the suburbs of philly. The most controversial thing I can remember was kissing Stacey London, since I believe we both had braces...
Other memories: I remember doing this hoakey thing with my voice. You know, trying to really sound like a baritone (or is that bass? I forget...). I guess it was not too dissimilar to what Dylan does on nashville skyline. But I was thirteen. And i had to pretend to be forty five or something. Ah, acting...
Ok back to LCT production. Kellie O'Hara (Nellie Forbush)'s voice was wonderful - so pure. And i dug how Bartlett Sher directed her to really be "non-stagey". We might call that naturalistic. Very nice. And very funny.
Interesting that none of the big musical numbers were done "hugely" - they were all very simplified. You got the feeling, hey, maybe this is what a bunch of folks on a south pacific island bored out of their mind might do to have fun.
The two quotes projected onto a screen at the beginning and the end were fairly provocative and emotive too. I am certain they are direct quotes from the novel. The image of the cast - walking slowly to their destiny (their deaths?) near the end was very haunting...It seemed to me that Sher deliberately segregated the cast - blacks, whites, women...which seems like an indictment of the times as much as it honors those Americans, too.
What also struck me was how long the darn evening was. Some Enchanted Really Long Evening. The first act must be about 90 minutes. Which is a long time these days. And I think must have made for a fairly trying evening back in 1980 at Elkins Park. I only think we cut one song - a duet between Cable and Nellie which I don't remember - though I was no doubt back stage preening or flirting.
Chris Bartlett as the guy who wears the coconutsThe big controversy of You've Got To Be Carefully Taught seems ages ago. The racist-ness of Nellie Forbush - and how at the end of the musical (SPOILER ALERT) - she puts aside her racism and embraces Emile's Polynesian children does seem a bit dated...This seems to be the major plot point - can Nellie accept the man she loves even if he has mixed race babies from another woman, his deceased wife? This dilemma outweighs the fact that Emile killed someone. That's ok with Nellie - but those kids... There is something very dated about that - and it seems hard to imagine that a musical could be sustained with that as such a huge factor nowadays.
David Pittsinger who plays Emile (and is cast aged appropriately) has a brilliant voice. The audience really responded more to This Nearly Was Mine than to Some Enchanted Evening, which was surprising. But Some Enchanted Evening is a pop hit, and This Nearly Was Mine is way more emotional.
What also struck me - is how strange the human brain works. I could recite whole songs word for word, and passages of dialogue, as if I had performed them yesterday. Why?
All in all, it made me a bit nostalgic for those old friends. And I hope to one day revive the show at EP middle school one of these days....
Marcia Charen as Bloody Mary and Ray Cullom Lt. Cable who I forget was from Philadelphia and went to Princeton (Cable, not Cullom). But how weird to have a woman pimp out her daughter so egregiously?
2 comments:
I suspect that someone has already pointed this out to you, but the production you were in didn't cut the Cable/Nellie duet--"My Girl Back Home" was cut from the original production and restored for this one.
I might be the only other person in New York who can say that I've seen not only the LCT revival of South Pacific but also the EPMS revival.
However, I always felt Ray Cullom's true triumph was Nanki Poo.
What I remember about the EPMS version was the way Ray- who was quite tall- towered over the young man who played his superior office. They played it for laughs.
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