![]() The two fall in love with the speed that gives musicals a bad rap, and long before Emile tells Nellie about his two young children. Inspired by James A Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Tales of the South Pacific, the plot centres on the relationship between an American nurse, Nellie, and a middle-aged French plantation owner, Emile de Becque. Gina Beck (Nellie) & Julian Ovenden (Emile) in Chichester Festival Theatre’s South Pacific. It’s not radical by any means, instead, it makes its points subtly, while showing how these prejudices – be they race-, gender-, age- or class-related – are still with us. As a result, South Pacific is rarely staged these days, with directors and producers fearing a backlash should the production miss the mark.įortunately, the duo’s anti-racist message is brought to the fore in director Daniel Evans’ production, which ran at Chichester Festival Theatre in 2021 before transferring to Sadler’s Wells this summer. But this worthy, before-its-time ambition can get overshadowed by the play’s more problematic content, including racial stereotypes, moments of cultural appropriation and celebratory depictions of white saviours – all of which fall short of today’s PC standards. ![]() The 1949 hit is set on a South Pacific island during World War II, from where the duo felt able to address the racism they saw as prevalent among their fellow Americans back home. South Pacific is one of the more controversial titles in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s musical canon, which began on an American cowboy ranch with Oklahoma! and ended in the Austrian mountains with The Sound of Music.
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