Review by Matthew Murray
includes:
The most engulfing and enrapturing experience of this year - and quite a
few others in recent memory... This production speaks and sings to your
heart in a way few shows today do.
This may shock you if you place too much faith in conventional wisdom.
Showered with honors (including the Tony Award for Best Musical and the
Pulitzer Prize for Drama) when it opened in 1949, this
once-groundbreaking title has (been) dogged by the dreaded D word:
"dated."
But after 40 years of Civil Rights, and with a half-white, half-black
senator in prime contention to be the next President of the United
States...nothing about this evening feels locked in the mid 20th
century.
When Navy nurse Nellie Forbush (Kelli O'Hara) and French plantation
owner Emile de Becque (Paulo Szot) nourish their romance or see it
disintegrate when he reveals to her the mixed-race children he fathered
with his late Polynesian wife, the expectation and tension between them
are palpable.
The ***-at-first-sight-love-at-second joining of Lieutenant Joe Cable
(Matthew Morrison) and native girl Liat (Li Jun Li), daughter of the
profiteering Bloody Mary (Loretta Ables Sayre), explores the more
visceral and sadder side of love ruined by institutional hate. Even when
the story turns to its subsidiary Everymen, it delights. Hammerstein and
Logan adopt a somewhat lighter brush for the out-for-himself Seabee
Luther Billis (Danny Burstein) and commanding officers Captain Brackett
(Skipp Sudduth) and Commander Harbison (Sean Cullen), but paint with no
less exacting detail the full range of colorful personalities around
whom the Pacific operation revolves.
But the difference between such ensemble-styled roles and a full-out
star part quickly becomes clear here. Kelli O'Hara is riveting in her
dramatic scenes, looking like she'd take steel wool to her skin to scrub
away Emile's taint when she learns his secret, and as if her soul has
dissolved when facing the possibility of his death later on. But she's
not the irrepressible spirit she describes in "A Cockeyed Optimist" or
the defiant feminist of "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair."
She comes across as a graduate student in acting projecting careful
introspection, which is the last thing the ebullient "A Wonderful Guy"
or the all-for-fun "Honey Bun" need.
Nellie must be both the young girl energized by life's wonders and the
grown woman thrust into its pain. O'Hara can't provide the entertainment
that should accompany the enlightenment, never projecting the
spontaneous whimsy of a star loving what she's doing and dying for you
to feel the same.
Matthew Morrison's problem is the opposite. Though dynamite in his
lighter scenes, he strains as his role's weightiness increases,
connecting with his vital songs on the superficial level of the
less-experienced Cable, but not of the more complex, conflicted man he
eventually becomes.
Everyone else is spectacular. Paulo Szot, an opera notable, brings an
unimpeachable baritone, nuanced acting skills, and an effortless sense
of comedy to Emile, as ingratiating in his own semi-silly reprise of
"I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair" as he is sensual in "Some
Enchanted Evening" and searing in "This Nearly Was Mine."
Loretta Ables Sayre is a down-and-dirty Bloody Mary who wrenches you
into her fantasies without ever falling for them herself. Li Jun Li is
an appealingly innocent Liat, while Danny Burstein is a complete hoot as
the op****tunistic Billis.
Best of all, however, might be the orchestra....the 30 outstanding
musicians conducted by Ted Sperling give it an invigorating sound. Their
playing of Robert Russell Bennett's peerless original orchestrations
reminds you with every note how gloriously musicals once insisted on
catching your ear.
***************************************
Bartlett Sher's meticulous and delicate staging, the 40-person cast, and
the rich look and sound of everything put to shame the season's other
threadbare and vulgar revivals, Grease, Sunday in the Park with George,
and Gypsy.
*****************************************
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