Review: "South Pacific" -- Northland Performing Arts Center, Imagine Productions, Vaud-Villities

  South Pacific is one Rodgers and Hammerstein most beloved and enduring musicals.  Based on James Mitchner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 novel, “Tales Of The Pacific”, “South Pacific” premiered on Broadway in 1949, on the heals of WW II, which provides the background for the story.  The show was an instant hit, running for over 1900 performances.  It won ten Tony’s, including Best Musical and Best Score plus awards in ten acting categories.  It has undergone several successful Broadway revivals and was developed into a major motion picture in 1958.   It boasts several toe-tapping tunes that stick in your head and lasting themes of lost love, love that triumphs, war, life, death, prejudice and struggling to overcome the built in biases of background, culture and upbringing.  

    Northland Performing Arts Center in cooperation with Vaud-Villities and Imagine Productions has created a lavish reproduction featuring Central Ohio’s beloved WCMH Channel 4 broadcasting icon Cabot Rea as middle-aged, wealthy planter Emile de Becque and Susan Wilson as young Navy nurse, Ensign Nellie Forbush from Little Rock Arkansas. Rea and Wilson both have good synergy, strong energy, and consistent characterizations to include accents. They sing beautifully.

     The talents of Denae Sullivan (Bloody Mary) Sharon Kibe (Bloody Mary’s daughter, Liat), David Hammond (Lt. Joseph Cable) and Kent Stuckey (Luther Billis), provide strong support in other principle roles.  The “Honey Bun” song with Nellie and Billis is especially raucous and fun.  Stuckey’s bold, uninhibited depictions lend leadership and vitality to the other, less-experienced supporting cast members who sometimes seem a little tentative in their line delivery and stage movements.

      Director Pamela Hill’s experienced discernment provides effective emphasis in creating beautiful stage pictures and focus for song highlights and other important moments in the story.  Hill choreographs set shifts with musical underscoring to keep the action flowing at a steady pace.

    Scott Jones’ set design with pieces on loan from Andrew Weibel and Pickerington Community Theater’s recent “South Pacific” production, features several clever moving parts to depict various locations. 

   Lighting Designer Derryck Menard makes good use of lighting that is available.  Unfortunately, The Northland Performing Arts Center doesn’t have enough instruments to make this kind of show glow as it could and should. 

   Orchestra placement is another shortcoming of the space.  The Orchestra is stuck in a back corner, stage right.  Music Director Brian Horne and his ten-piece orchestra are playing well and doing heroic work in this less-than-ideal situation, but the poor orchestra placement and flawed microphone management conspire to create difficulties in actors being able to hear the orchestra or the orchestra being able to hear the singing to make them sync well together. 

   Scott Jones choreography is a mixed bag.  Among a cast of folks with varying levels of experience, it is difficult to find steps and movements that everybody can do.   More rehearsal would probably have helped.

   Jackie Farbeann’s costumes seem effective and appropriate except for the rank insignia of Capt. Brackett and Commander Harbison.  Brackett should have eagle insignia on his collar. Harbison should be wearing silver oak leaves.  Both have gold oak leaves.  Most audience members probably would not notice or care about this.  But as a former military person, this seems glaring and sloppy to me.

         Despite a few weaknesses, this is a very well executed production and well worth the price of admission.   

     Among other things, this production boasts outstanding community associations.  In addition to the afore-mentioned collaborations with Vaud-Villities, Imagine Productions and Pickerington Community Theater, the show features strong connections to Otterbein University’s Theater program with twelve Otterbein alumni among the cast, crew and orchestra, to include Rea, Hill, Stuckey and Horn.  The program notes also credit support from Actors Theater of Columbus and Columbus Children’s theater.  Producers and sponsors hope that large, lavish musical productions of this nature will become an annual tradition for the Northland Performing Arts Center and its community partners.