S. Pacific

[calimac]

Real high school musicals are not like Glee. I know this; I've seen them before, but not for a while. Attempts, at our previous residence, to keep posted on such events at the local school foundered on the school's complete lack of interest in keeping a calendar accessible to the general public who were not parents, and we never even tried to connect with the nearest school after we moved.

But this week one of the regulars on the neighborhood association mailing list passed on the info that the school was putting on South Pacific this weekend, because her son is in it. I have no particular brief for this particular work, but it has some good stuff and we knew about the performance, so we went. And discovered when we got there that the school not only has a very active theatre department, putting on half a dozen stage plays each year, but they've already scheduled next year, with dates, so on my calendar next year's musical goes.

So, South Pacific. Not like Glee, as I said. The leads were strong enough that the show didn't crumble around them. Nellie had a good line in bashful acting, and adopted an Arkansas accent while speaking which she dropped when she sang. Emile showed that he was Older and Serious by talking like Commander Data from Star Trek. Both sang strongly if loosely, and only crumbled on those high concluding notes. Lt. Cable was a milquetoast, but gathered all his gumption to emit the show's moral, "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught", with some passion and sincerity. Luther was enough of a hoot - less Ray Walston than John Travolta in looks and style - that I'm convinced he's the school's class clown. And Bloody Mary was bloody good. Her bio in the program book read "I have stage fright" but you wouldn't know it. She gave the character's pidgin speaking believably and sang with grace and confidence.

Comments

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

My high school, in 1970, put on a bowdlerized performance of South Pacific, with all references to miscegenation, racism, and especially pre-marital sex removed, which made it pretty much incomprehensible. When I finally encountered the uncut version, I understood why it was a worthwhile play. I'll never understand why that particular performance occurred, unless perhaps the choir director wanted to give a subversive demonstration of why it's wrong to gut a play of its meaning. It was even more bizarre given the overall political climate of the time and given that the school had just been desegregated four years before, with the first black girl ever admitted serving at that time as the president of the senior class (she is now a federal judge in Michigan, and the school brags about her at every opportunity. I guess I do, too).

The following year, the choir director was replaced. For the next several years, school musicals were Gilbert and Sullivan, set safely in the far past.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I tried out for South Pacific in the summer of 1971 when our community group put it on. They said I could be in the native chorus, and I bowed out, not wanting to smear my body with some sort of blacking every night for pretty much no reason. I've come a long way since then. Just last year, I tried out for "Oliver," and they said I could be in the chorus, and I said no.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

If there's any exposition in the book as to why Nellie and Cable decide against marrying their loves (I don't remember the movie or any other stage production well enough to remember if there is), that was cut. But the basic theme of the need to overcome such prejudice was there.

As is appropriate, for as we saw from the theatre department schedule, their theme this year was "Tolerance". Also on the offering were The Laramie Project, certainly a relevant choice, and The Comedy of Errors, which I guess is about the Ephesians learning to tolerate the Syracusans.

Ironic that Gilbert & Sullivan was considered "safe", as it was plenty subversive in its day. The catch is that institutions like the House of Lords and 19C British governmental pluralism aren't exactly relevant to 20/21C American concerns. Though the general theme of human folly remains everywhere. The only G&S whose specific topic still bites uncomfortably is the one that satirizes women's education, and surprise it isn't played much today, though artistically it's very good.

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

I suspect that schools may discourage publicizing student drama productions on the theory that any stranger attending the performances is obviously a prevert pedophile.

One local high school in Shorewood, a Milwaukee northside suburb (prosperous-ish, white-ish), sometimes breaks this taboo by advertising their productions on banners hung from an overpass over a high-traffic road. I wonder what success, if any, that has brought them?

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

High schools here advertise their shows. I haven't gone to look at any of them. "Oliver" was bad enough in many ways (not all) to drive me away from trying things for a while.

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

I remarked that "South Pacific" was a good choice for the school because of the racial breakdown in our neighborhood. The area is >50% Asian, so you can have a fair number of Asian kids be the Polynesians and they can also be the Americans. There was no need for white kids to pretend to be Asian.

I was also struck by the Bloody Mary being standard-teen sized. Typically that type of role in high school goes to the fat girl who can sing better than the female lead but who will never be cast as the female lead because of her size. This one had a lot of personality and was good. (There were a couple of larger teens in the chorus as nurses.)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Actually the Fremont High cachement area is considerably less Asian than that, and many of those Asians are Indian rather than East Asian, and there are a lot more Hispanics than in the immediate neighborhood, but your main point - that there are a lot of Asians in the school - is certainly still correct. I'm not sure if it's clear in the show that Bloody Mary and Liat are specifically Vietnamese (which is why they speak French, as Vietnam was a French colony in those days), as the now-obsolete term "Tonkinese" is used for them.