"Younger than springtime are you," Lt. Joe Cable sings to Liat, "softer than starlight are you," while in the deep background of the Tuacahn Amphitheatre's backless stage, other couples prance and dive in paradisiacal swimming holes.
As the number closes, Cable (Brandon Strawder) and Liat (Laila Brown) frolic upstage and embrace in the ocean wave that has, surprisingly, rushed to wash over the stage.
It's a cheesy song in a musical story that might seem dated in its preoccupation with the exotic beauty of Asian women. And despite the brilliance of the music in this Rodgers and Hammerstein 1949 Broadway classic - the 1958 movie soundtrack was familiar in American homes in the sticks, like mine, where parents' love stories were shaped by military service in faraway locales - the lyrics of this particular song are a hard sell for any young man who's only a few years older then his love interest.
Yet Tuacahn's production creates an oversized, catch-your-breath moment that perfectly encapsulates the angst of the two cross-cultural love stories in this World War II-era musical. And it's a witty touch, too, a nod back to Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster's famed, gritty beach tumble in the 1953 film "From Here to Eternity."
This is what makes Tuacahn's production seem both inventive and classic: To have an ocean at your command - in the middle of a desert, no less - could tempt producers to excess. But here the special effects of setting and production work to transform desert redrocks into a paradise more than half a century and half a world away.
Set on a U.S. military base on a Polynesian island, "South Pacific" revolves around "knuckleheaded" naive young Navy nurse Nellie Forbush (Suzie Jacobsen Balser) from Little Rock, or "Small Rock," as her lover, the middle-aged French plantation owner Emile de Becque (John Racca), terms it. Their budding romance is threatened when she learns of his past relationship with a native woman and their two mixed-race children. Lt. Cable confronts his racism after he retreats from marrying Liat, the teenage daughter of Bloody Mary, the island's loud-mouthed entrepreneur.
That's a simplistic summary of a story that's really concerned with the question of the exotic. Director Tim Threlfall, a Brigham Young University theater professor and Tuacahn veteran, grounds the action in the familiarity of its 1940s setting, thanks to military uniforms and hair wraps and jeeps driving through and behind the action, extending the story far beyond the limits of the stage. The extra space is well used, particularly in the second act as Lt. Cable and De Becque take off on a clandestine island mission that unfolds - and explodes - deep in backstage territory.
This musical's best-known ensemble numbers, the testosterone fest of "There Is Nothin' Like a Dame" and the squealing femininity of "Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair" - so easy to parody, so hard to sell - here play as richly rendered memories of the original staging. Both Bloody Mary (Amy Jo Phillips), the cackling native who shines on "Bali Ha'i," and Luther Billis (Kenneth Wayne), as the cunning Seabee transformed into Nellie's "Honey Bun," offer charming, well-timed humorous turns.
But the heart of the story is Nellie and Emile's romance, which blossoms thanks to Balser's impressive giggle and toothpaste-commercial-worthy smile. She offers an engaging, sprightly presence in "A Cockeyed Optimist" and other numbers, well-matched by the power of Racca's voice, which is particularly fine on "Some Enchanted Evening." Yet as the male lead, Racca needs more to do onstage when he's not singing to make his character come to full-bodied life.
The staging doesn't always help, as Nellie and Emile are mostly together on a cramped balcony, a contrast to the all-stage, all-outdoors expansiveness of Cable and Liat's romantic tableau. Another production complication is a wartime newsreel at the start of the second act that doesn't offer enough contrast for the audience to follow what's happening.
But overall, the cast plays exuberantly within the boundaries of the story, enjoying the un-PC joke of Bloody Mary learning the phrase "stingy bastard," while keeping the original language referring to the "Japs," another era's enemies. At a time when immigration and language battles have transformed many middle-American burgs into border towns, "South Pacific" raises freshly relevant racial questions, unfolding its wartime love story with voices as big and romantic as the theater's expansive setting.
Contact Ellen Fagg at ellenf@sltrib.com or 801-257-8621. Send comments about this review to livingeditor@sltrib.com.
Review
"South Pacific"
WHERE: Tuacahn Ampitheatre, 1100 Tuacahn Drive, Ivins.
WHEN: Plays Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 8:30 p.m., in repertory with "Peter Pan" on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Continues through Sept. 2. Be prepared for weather conditions, rain or heat.
TICKETS: $24 to $44 (senior and AAA discounts); preshow dinner buffet $11 ($8 children).
BOTTOM LINE: Inventive technical staging, including ocean waves, war explosions and fireworks, doesn't overwhelm the musical's big-voiced love stories.
