The story behind South Pacific is as old as the islands themselves: Girl meets boy, they fall in love and get forced apart by prejudice. But it’s one of the lead characters’ own foibles (Nellie the army nurse, beautifully played by Amanda Crider) that comes between the lovers, and not even she knows if she can turn herself around before it’s too late.
Maybe that’s why the play opens with Jerome and Ngana, (Caleb Swan and Quinlyn Manfull, respectively). These two sweet children of mixed South Pacific and European blood sing so sweetly that shivers will climb up and down your spine. They reflect the same sweet innocence Nellie has when she first meets Emil (Bojan Knezevic), a French plantation owner living in the islands. But the children are bookends to the skepticism, irony and exploitation of adults, marooned on remote islands in a world at war.
Not everybody is marooned. The Pacific Islander known as Bloody Mary (played by Glaceia Henderson on opening night, with a voice like dark silk) finds a way to turn almost every situation to her advantage, even if the ethical implications are dubious at best. When she’s not hawking shrunken heads or bartering for grass skirts, Mary seduces a recent arrival to visit the mysterious island of “Bali Ha’i,” to Mary’s personal gain and, at least from a Western perspective, her daughter’s expense.
Meanwhile Nellie and Emil have fallen in love, but Nellie can’t accept his children by another woman. It’s not until Emil is seemingly out of reach forever that Nellie discovers her mistake--but in a world torn apart by war, two lovers separated by circumstance may never be reunited. When Emil’s radio transmissions suddenly end, Nellie fears him captured or dead.
Ideally, lighting and sound should fade into the background, seamlessly supporting the tension generated by the South Pacific story. But after a nearly flawless first half, the light operator seemed to sneak out for a quick break. One spotlight stayed fixed when a character moved in and out of it, still speaking, and marching soldiers were left in near-darkness so complete that it looked unintentional.
There were a few minor sound issues, too. The actors discovered that if they hug each other tightly with microphone wires on their backs, the audience hears a tell-tale crackle. And if the mic is switched on a moment too soon backstage, we hear a murmured “thank you” that’s completely disconnected from the action onstage.
But the microphones were necessary to support a few beautiful but underpowered voices, Crider’s chief among them. Her acting was passionately flawless and her first solo drew murmurs of “Wow,” from the audience. But without the mic, she would have quickly been swallowed up by the Anchorage Opera’s “Big Wild Chorus” orchestral accompaniment.
Knezevic had the opposite problem: Power and beautiful tones to spare but his enunciation was occasionally muddied, making it hard to be sure what he was telling us so beautifully. Yet overall, the characters were convincing enough that all the audience really cared about was seeing them reunited in the end.
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