One (more) enchanted evening: "South Pacific" on KPBS
When Bartlett Sher was doing experimental, politically charged theater in San Diego two decades ago (and laboring as a waiter to help support his directing habit), staging major musical revivals on Broadway didn't necessarily seem the most likely career path.
But Sher's 2008 production of the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic "South Pacific" cemented his reputation as one of the top directors in New York, after he had grabbed attention with earlier, Tony-nominated work on "The Light in the Piazza" and "Awake and Sing!"
Sher earned the Tony as best director for "South Pacific" (which had six other wins), and the show -- in its first return to Broadway since the original 1949 production -- became the longest-running Rodgers & Hammerstein revival in Broadway history, with exactly 1,000 regular performances as of this Sunday.
That 1,000th performance, alas, will be its last; "South Pacific" closes this weekend. And whiie a national tour is under way, San Diego is not on the itinerary, at least for now. (The tour does hit the Orange County Performing Arts Center in October.)
San Diegans who missed the show on Broadway, though, still have a chance to witness Sher's luminous and moving take on this surprisingly modern musical about a wartime romance vexed by racial prejudice. This week, PBS-TV's "Live From Lincoln Center" premieres a telecast of the show, featuring the revival's original stars: Kelli O'Hara as the American nurse Nellie Forbush and Paulo Szot as the French-born plantation owner Emile DeBecque.
The program debuts locally this Saturday at 9 p.m. on KPBS/Channel 15. Even if you've never seen the show (or the glossy, somewhat lightweight 1958 movie), the songs will be familiar -- "One Enchanted Evening," "Bali Hai" and "There Is Nothing LIke a Dame" among them. Definitely worth setting your DVR to save -- and savor -- this one.
(Sher's next project, by the way, is something pretty different: a musical version of the Pedro Almodovar movie "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown," featuring ex-San Diegans Brian Stokes Mitchell and Danny Burstein along with Patti LuPone, and with a score by David Yazbek, who also did the music for the Old Globe-sprung "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels." It hits Broadway this fall in a production by Lincoln Center Theater, where Sher is now resident director.)
No comments:
Post a Comment