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In love with a wonderful 'Pacific'

By Matt Windman

6:55 PM EDT, April 3, 2008

Danny Burstein (Luther Billis) and Kelli O'Hara (Ensign Nellie Forbush) entertain the troops in the first Broadway revival of SOUTH PACIFIC, the iconic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical about the lives of U.S. military men, nurses and the residents of the Polynesian island they occupy during WW II. Vivian Beaumont Theater, Lincoln Center. (Ari Mintz/Newsday)

"Grease," "Gypsy" and "Sunday in the Park with George" are receiving strong Broadway revivals, but none is so enchanting as Lincoln Center's revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein's "South Pacific."

Bartlett Sher's winning production, marking the first Broadway revival of the 1949 musical, is reverential yet freethinking, cinematic yet intimate, militaristic yet romantic.

"So, call me a cockeyed optimist," but this has the lush production values (40 in the cast, 30 in the orchestra, large seaside set design) that audiences should demand for any musical revival. Like its lead character, who is "in love with a wonderful guy," we are in love with this wonderful production. Its majestic score includes "There is Nothin' Like a Dame," "Younger than Springtime" and "Bali Ha'i."

Inspired by James A. Michener's "Tales of the South Pacific," passages of which are displayed on a scrim, "South Pacific" looks at American soldiers and nurses stranded on a tropical island during World War II.

When a southern Navy nurse falls in love with a rich French planter with two half-Polynesian children and a handsome lieutenant falls for a native Vietnamese girl, they are forced to confront their homegrown racial bigotry.

To highlight the discrimination theme, Sher goes so far as segregating the cast's black soldiers.

Rising starlet Kelli O'Hara won the plum role of Nellie Forbush over many others including Victoria Clark, who played her mother in "The Light in the Piazza." Looking like Doris Day, O'Hara gives as an effervescent performance that bursts with youthful vitality, silliness and tenderness.

As Nellie's love interest Emilie de Becque, Brazilian opera singer Paulo Szot could loosen up a bit, but easily scores with the romantic paean "Some Enchanted Evening" and haunting ballad "This Nearly Was Mine."

Other standouts include Danny Burstein as coconut shell bra wearing soldier Luther Billis, Matthew Morrison as young Lieutenant Cable; and Hawaiian performer Loretta Ables Sayre as entrepreneurial native Bloody Mary.

Vivian Beaumont Theater, 150 West 65th St, 212-239-6200, $65-110. Tues 8pm, Wed 2 & 8pm, Thurs-Fri 8pm, Sat 2 & 8pm, Sun 3pm. Thru June 22.c