A Revival of South Pacific--Where Did Forty Years Go?

New York

Yesterday, I decided to walk down memory lane. On what was a most beautiful day in New York, I walked down to Lincoln Center with the resolve of a woman on a mission--tickets for South Pacific.

Lincoln Center is being renovated, so the large plaza with the Met in the center with Chagall's stunning murals as backdrop and the fountain as foreground, were blocked by 8 foot high temporary walls. I walked along 65th Street and up the steps to the side entrance to the Beaumont Theater. As I turned into the walled pathway leading to the theater, I could hear strains of I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair" coming through the sound system that had been set up through the maze of construction.
I suddenly felt like smiling. I could just see Mary Martin washing her hair on stage in the original production of South Pacific.

I loved that Rogers and Hammerstein classic from the time I heard the first note of the first song 40 some years ago. At that time, I was a girl growing up in Iowa, a long way from Lincoln Center. Well, there was no Lincoln Center at that point, but still, I was a long way from New York for sure.

I played piano pretty well by that time, though. So, I ordered the South Pacific music from the local sheet music store in Waterloo, Iowa. I thought I had ordered "selections" from the musical. But when I went to pick up the order, the clerk handed me a three inch thick score. it was the actual musical score complete with every note and lyric that was in the play--including a couple of pages of music at the beginning to get the audience settled in. And a couple of songs that weren't in the movie version.

I brought the score home and started playing bits and pieces after school every night until I had mastered the complex music. I would sit for hours and sing the lyrics, accompanying myself. Or invite my friend Jenny, a soprano in chorus with me at school, to sing the Mary Martin part. ( I'd sing Bloody Mary, though. That was my favorite, along with "You've Got To be Carefully Taught" which was, at that time fairly brave of the writers since it was essentially a song about the dangers of ethnic discrimination. ) Read NPR's take on the production and its history at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89309296.

So, imagine my disappointment when I arrived a the ticket office to find that the musical revival of South Pacific, which opened last month to rave reviews, is sold out until July! July! I could be dead by July. Who knew that a revival would sweep New York theater goers with such gusto. There are, right now, lots of alternatives for theater buffs--like Patrick Stewart's Macbeth or a dozen dramas like Top Girls that are good theater.

I walked away disappointed, cranky that I would have to practice delayed gratification and wait for July just to see this play.
My disappointment is probably a little bit more pointed since I was looking forward to seeing the play about soldiers on an island in the middle of World War II when life seemed to be simpler, songs seemed to have clear meanings. Oh, yes. And there were happy endings. Ezio Pinza got Mary Martin in the end. How could she resist him. After his deep baritone voice concluded the last lines of "Some Enchanted Evening", every woman in America would have followed him anywhere.

And, by the way. Where did those 40 years go? 40 Years!