I always do things backwards.
Having finished a four-weekend run in the Musical Theater Southwest production of "South Pacific" – I played a crusty but good-hearted Navy Captain - I borrowed James Michener’s "Tales of the South Pacific" (1947) from the library.
It’s a heck of a book. Michener, who was in the Navy during WW II, tells a bunch of short stories about US Navy personnel, French expatriates and natives of the Pacific that ring true and keep one reading. (I’m not sure they add up to a novel, but that’s an academic concern.)
The experience at MTS was instructive. I was very impressed with how well organized the director and assistant were; in two months they mounted a musical with lots of actors, singers and dancers and two little kids, all this on a stage not yet converted from movie-to-playhouse and lacking a pit for the musicians.
The number and importance of volunteers was new to me. Albuquerque Little Theater and Adobe use very few by contrast. MTS was a tiny bit bureaucratic, too, compared to those smaller operations. But the bureaucracy was supportive.
My fellow cast members were the most fascinating. What a talented bunch! I remain surprised that a not-very-big town like Albuquerque has a persuasive Emile de Becque running a family insurance agency. That there’s a splendid Nellie Forbush studying business ethics at UNM. (She tried to study her text between scenes.) Also, a handsome young ministerial student up to the challenges of Lt. Cable. And it is little short of mind-boggling that the town boasts a day-trader (yeah, he uses the Net to gamble on Wall Street’s up-and-downs) capable of a superior performance as Luther Billis, even when that Seabee belly dances!
Most of the Seabees and Nurses were young and it is my sense that they found "South Pacific" a foreign land. If so, that’s understandable. It was 60-odd years ago and looking back at that last "good" war, Americans were naïve and romantic.
These kids would be at home in "Cabaret" and "Chicago" shows etched in the acids of skepticism and cynicism, portraying human frailty and disintegration, big on cruelty and sex. So they did well coping with the hope, transcendence, sacrifice and love that Rodgers and Hammerstein lifted from Michener’s less idealistic portraits and landscapes.