A Rodgers and Hammerstein chestnut might seem an unlikely choice for Washington's Arena Stage, but South Pacific isn't merely a romantic musical comedy. Thematically, it deals with racial prejudice, imperiled freedom and war - weighty issues that are disturbingly timely today.
Admittedly, this 1949 musical showcases one of Rodgers and Hammerstein's plummiest scores ("Some Enchanted Evening," "Younger Than Springtime" and "A Wonderful Guy" are just three of its gems). And it takes place in the type of lush island setting for which the term "tropical splendor" was coined.
But the cheery characters who clown around in numbers such as "There is Nothin' Like a Dame" and "Honey Bun" are actually marking time until they can enter the thick of World War II. And though one of the show's two sets of lovers finds happiness in the end, the other finds death and despair.
Directing her first major American musical, Arena's Molly Smith (assisted by choreographer Baayork Lee) does a swell job with the show's lighter numbers, but its darker tones seem muted - a frequent problem with this show and one that also characterized the national touring production that came to the Mechanic Theatre last season.
Smith does make some efforts to accentuate the show's gravity. The most successful is an 11th-hour flashback in which Ensign Nellie Forbush is surrounded by fellow nurses reprising a snippet of "Wonderful Guy." With this once-exuberant love song haunting her while the military personnel prepare to leave the island, Nellie realizes she may never again see the man she loves - French planter Emile de Becque, who has a brief walk-on during her nightmarish fantasy.
Smith begins the production with a similar montage during the overture. First the islanders filter in, then the military, whom the islanders look at with dismay and eventually relieve of some of their more cumbersome paraphernalia, such as helmets and boots. Nellie and Emile also make a brief appearance, looking at each other across the crowded stage while the orchestra plays a few bars of "Some Enchanted Evening." It's a lovely opening, but it offers no suggestion of the darker moments ahead.
The production also suffers from uneven lead performances. Kate Baldwin makes an adorably pert, tomboyish Nellie, but her singing, like her acting, has a brash edge better suited to the show's high-spirited numbers than its love songs. As Emile, Richard White boasts a luxurious baritone tailor-made for romantic numbers. And his acting doesn't merely ooze continental charm, he lathers it on as thickly as the shampoo with which Nellie tries to "wash that man right out'a" her hair. (At times, however, White overdoes Emile's French accent; when he tells Nellie he believes in "the free life," it sounds like "free love," which is hardly what she wants to hear.)
In the role of Lt. Cable, the Marine who falls in love with a young Tonkinese woman, Brad Anderson lacks the vocal assurance to convey the longing his character feels in "Younger Than Springtime." The actor fares better with the angry, ironic number that proclaims the show's anti-racism theme, "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught." He also does justice to a rarely heard song, "My Girl Back Home," which was cut from the stage show but restored in the 1958 movie. A duet in which he and Baldwin's Nellie sing about how far they are from home, the song offers one of the only vocal links between the show's two love stories.
Cable's love interest, Liat, has almost no lines, but Liz Paw imbues her with heartbreaking innocence that is never cloying. When Liat and her mother (Lori Tan Chinn as Bloody Mary) perform "Happy Talk," they transform one of the show's most problematic numbers - dropped from the 2001 ABC movie, in which Chinn also played Bloody Mary - into a touching commentary on the power of love to transcend language.
Praise also goes to Lawrence Redmond, whose portrayal of wheeler-dealer Luther Billis is first-rate comedy; just watch him swivel those "twirly and whirly" hips - hilariously adorned with hubcaps by costume designer Robert Perdziola - in the exuberantly staged "Honey Bun."
Music director George Fulginiti-Shakar gets tight choral work from both the male and female ensembles, though choreographer Lee's dance numbers occasionally seem too balletic for a rag-tag bunch of Seabees.
Oscar Hammerstein II and co-author Joshua Logan (the show's original director) adapted South Pacific's libretto from James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning Tales of the South Pacific. They toned down some of Michener's material, but there is ample grit remaining (the musical won a Pulitzer of its own).
At Arena - where the show isn't only Smith's first large-scale musical, it's the theater's first Rodgers and Hammerstein production - most of the grit is overshadowed by gloss. The result is an entertaining evening, but one that adds few new interpretive insights to this classic American musical.
South Pacific
Where: Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St. S.W., Washington
When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Sundays; 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; matinees at 2:30 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m. most Sundays and noon selected Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Through Feb. 2
Tickets: $34-$52
Call: 202-488-3300