RIP Eartha Kitt (1927 - 2008)Even as I had celebrated the joys of Christmas throughout yesterday, I went to bed last night with a heavy heart after learning that the magnificent, sultry and completely irrepressible
Eartha Kitt died of colon cancer.
This triple threat (actor, singer, dancer) who once dared speak her mind at the White House was 81 and one of a kind. Never one to shy away from speaking her mind or living life to its fullest, Ms. Kitt was simply wonderrrrrrrful.
Given how often I heard her 1954 classic "Santa Baby" on the radio this holiday season, it was sadly ironic that this two-time Tony nominee -- for 1978's
Timbuktu! and 2000's
The Wild Party -- passed away on Christmas Day.
Personally, I had two opportunities to see her perform live on stage, and I'll always cherish those memories.
The first time came in the early part of this decade when she took on the role of the Fairy Godmother as part of a color-blind cast revival that
toured with
Rodgers and
Hammerstein's
Cinderella -- the chance to see Ms. Kitt was the sole reason I went, and despite the smallish role, she did not disappoint as she sang, "Impossible."
But the second, unforgettable time came nearly two years ago on Valentine's Day 2007. Ms. Kitt was part of a poetry reading. Not just any poetry reading, mind you, but one that featured the likes of a few other actors of note you may have heard of:
Joanna Gleason,
Charles Grodin,
Philip Seymour Hoffman,
Chris Sarandon,
Joanne Woodward and the late great
Paul Newman. Eartha Kitt and these other fine actors offered their own unique, individual voices on the ecstasy and agony that arguably make love life’s ultimate affection -- all as part of a mega-bite Valentine called
Come Be My Love...Love Spoken Here, a fundraiser for Connecticut's venerable
Westport Country Playhouse. I can still vividly recall Ms. Kitt's tender, impassioned humanity and humor, thinking how extraordinarily she made every single word dance in my ears.
During a reception after the performance, The Love of My Life and I had a unique opportunity to speak with this legendary diva, and I use that term in its true best sense. Ms. Kitt could not have been more gracious. For us, it was perrrrrrfection.
As my friend Eric in Atlanta has said, may she rrrrrrrrrrrrest in peace.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Labels: Broadway, Cinderella, Come Be My Love...Love Spoken Here, Eartha Kitt, In Memoriam, Musical, Oscar Hammerstein II, Richard Rodgers, Santa Baby, The Wild Party, Timbuktu, Touring Production
Wholly Happy Talk! South Pacific Turns Into Open-Ended RunIt's as if Bloomberg's
John Simon knew what was coming!
Bartlett Sher's critically-acclaimed revival of
Richard Rodgers and
Oscar Hammerstein II's
South Pacific has just been
officially extended into an open-ended run!
All I can say is "Oh, what a beautiful afternoon!"
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.Related Stories:Did Critics Think There Is Nothing Like South Pacific? (April 4, 2008)
South Pacific (The SOB Review) (April 4, 2008)
South Pacific: Some Enchanted Opening Night (April 3, 2008)
Is Johansson's South Pacific Journey Just Happy Talk? (March 14, 2007)
Will Broadway's First-Ever South Pacific Revival Provide Some Enchanted Evenings? (December 19, 2006)
Labels: Bartlett Sher, Broadway, Extension, John Simon, Lincoln Center, Musical, Oscar Hammerstein II, Revival, Richard Rodgers, South Pacific
Did Critics Think There Is Nothing Like South Pacific?Looks like critics collectively had some enchanted evenings (and matinees -- just like
I did) as they're rhapsodic in their praise this morning for the very first and long overdue Broadway revival of
Richard Rodgers and
Oscar Hammerstein II's
South Pacific, which opened last night at
Lincoln Center's
Vivian Beaumont Theatre. Directed by
Bartlett Sher, the first-ever revival stars
Kelli O'Hara,
Paulo Szot,
Matthew Morrison,
Loretta Ables Sayre,
Danny Burstein and
Li Jun Li.
Praising Sher and
Christopher Gattelli for having "reinvigorated the concept of the organic musical, in which song feels as natural as breathing,"
The New York Times'
Ben Brantley, who saw the very same performance as I, is effusive: "There’s not an ounce of we-know-better-now irony in Mr. Sher’s staging. Yet the show feels too vital to be a museum piece, too sensually fluid to be square.... It’s as if a vintage photograph had been restored not with fuzzy, hand-colored prettiness but with you-are-there clarity.... [I]n a superbly shaded portrait (O'Hara) gives the character a troubled, apprehensive guardedness as well.... When (Szot) delivers 'Some Enchanted Evening' or 'This Nearly Was Mine,' it’s not as a swoon-making blockbuster (though of course it is), but as a measured and honest consideration of love."
Proclaiming this a "gorgeous revival,"
Elysa Gardner of
USA Today offers four stars: "[D]irector Bartlett Sher and a gifted, great-looking cast fully engage both the challenges faced by these and other characters and the romantic sweep of Rodgers and Hammerstein's ravishing score. Led by Brazilian baritone Paulo Szot and the increasingly wondrous Kelli O'Hara.... When she kicks up her heels and does cartwheels while performing 'A Wonderful Guy,' O'Hara summons the spiritual buoyancy that makes a certain kind of American musical uniquely transporting. Such spine-tingling moments ensure that this
South Pacific doesn't just float; it soars."
"Simply wonderful!" raves
New York Post's
Clive Barnes in his rare four-star review: "Where Sher and Yeargan have been especially effective is in their sense of period, and, more important, a period filtered through the perspective of history. (Interestingly, although the races are carefully kept apart, the show updates the integration of the US Navy by a couple of decades.) This
South Pacific is not a faded photograph, but a modern etching. Except in one delicious respect: O'Hara, who gives a totally different reading from the role's great originator,
Mary Martin, offers an uncannily precise re-creation of her 'Honey Bun.' Charming! Otherwise, O'Hara delivers Nellie on her own terms and in her own deliquescent persona. If you've never seen a 'deliquescent persona' before, that's just another good reason to rush to the Beaumont."
Trumpeting this as "ravishing theatre,"
Variety's
David Rooney heaps on the praise: "The keynote to Sher's approach is restraint. Nothing is pushed too hard in this naturalistic presentation, stripped of Broadway bravado, whether it's dramatic scenes, comedy or even the seemingly effortless vocals.... All that quiet restraint serves to make the stealth-like, cumulative emotional power more overwhelming..... Possibly the most accomplished young actress in American musical theater today, Kelli O'Hara's creamy vocals are perfection.... The strength of character, quiet masculinity, kindness and mellow intensity Szot brings to the role are all channeled in his velvety voice. His 'Some Enchanted Evening' is more measured than the usual impassioned declaration but all the more stirring for it, and his escalating regret in 'This Nearly Was Mine' delivers chills."
Practically wishing "It should easily play for at least 1,925 performances," Bloomberg's
John Simon also offers huzzahs: "Pretty Kelli O'Hara is deliciously girlish, with prance in her movements and glints in her glances.... The Brazilian baritone Paulo Szot is surely the best Emile ever.... Sher restored material cut from the original script that deals compellingly with racism. He has excelled at getting mute, peripheral characters to scurry about or linger atmospherically to perfection (note two distant, sunbathing nurses), and in making first-rate use of an airplane and all sorts of military equipment.... Most important, Sher has retained the cinematic flow, naturalism and suggestive use of
Trude Rittman's brilliant underscoring."
Concluding that Sher's "spring '08 creation is top of the line,"
Joe Dziemianowicz of New York's
Daily News has also fallen for the revival: "What makes this impeccably acted and designed production so extraordinary is Bartlett Sher's meticulous and dramatic direction.... The show is filled with fantastic and familiar songs that are presented here like musical conversation, making them sound fresh and exciting. Characters are played with such intimacy you practically hear hearts flutter as people fall in love.... O'Hara is just plain wonderful.... (Szot's) version of 'This Nearly Was Mine' thrills."
Lauding it as "the finest Rodgers and Hammerstein revival since
Nicholas Hytner's epochal
Carousel of 1994,"
The New York Sun's
Eric Grode is unequivocal: "Director Bartlett Sher has risen to the challenge, crafting a crisp, sumptuous, unabashedly emotional revival that finds an almost perfect balance between severity and opulence.... Mr. Sher is seemingly incapable of creating a stage picture that is imprecise or unattractive.... And just as his abundantly charismatic stars, Paulo Szot and the wonderful Kelli O'Hara, each show an acute sensitivity to dynamics as the conflicted lovers Emile de Becque and Nellie Forbush, Mr. Sher finds room for emotions of all shapes and sizes, folding everything from chaotic burlesque to piercing naturalism within
Michael Yeargan's inviting sets...."
Suddenly, there's a real race in the Tony category of Best Revival of a Musical. Will the overflowing praise for
South Pacific result in a well-earned extension for its limited run? We'd better hope so since it's currently scheduled to close on the very June afternoon that the Tonys will be awarded.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.Related Stories:South Pacific (The SOB Review) (April 4, 2008)
South Pacific: Some Enchanted Opening Night (April 3, 2008)
Is Johansson's South Pacific Journey Just Happy Talk? (March 14, 2007)
Will Broadway's First-Ever South Pacific Revival Provide Some Enchanted Evenings? (December 19, 2006)
Labels: Bartlett Sher, Broadway, Critics' Capsule, Kelli O'Hara, Matthew Morrison, Musical, Oscar Hammerstein II, Paulo Szot, Revival, Richard Rodgers, South Pacific
South Pacific (The SOB Review) - Vivian Beaumont Theatre, Lincoln Center, New York, NY
***1/2 (out of ****)From the moment
Ted Sperling cues his 30-piece orchestra, commencing the initial swells from the overture for one of the 20th Century's most beloved musical scores, it's clear that this
South Pacific is going to be a special island of enchanting entertainment in a Broadway sea dotted with lesser destinations.
Bartlett Sher's surprisingly innovative yet entirely natural direction begins by peeling back the stage to reveal the full orchestra, serenading the audience with
Robert Russell Bennett's lush orchestrations for the prelude to one of the truly classic scores from the oeuvre of
Richard Rodgers and
Oscar Hammerstein II. The audience responds rapturously -- and who can blame them given that it's taken an astounding 54 years since these familiar strains were last heard on the Great White Way.
Fortunately, it serves as a harmoniously honest harbinger of things to come as it depicts the early fragility of America's
Greatest Generation, which is regrettably on the cusp of forever fading into history. This truly majestic revival is not only mesmerizing with its timely focus on the sacrifice of war, but is absolutely gorgeous in Sher's loving interpretation aided by striking set (
Michael Yeargan) and lighting (
Donald Holder) designs.
What's more, Hammerstein and
Joshua Logan's Pulitzer Prize-winning book provided its earliest 1949 audience with one of the stage's first forthright depictions of racial bigotry and hate. Way ahead of its time, its enduring message still seems rather prescient even for today's audiences who -- thanks in no small part to our media during this presidential election cycle -- continue to deal with issues related to the color of one's skin.
Sher maintains
South Pacific's twin story centerpieces: the inability of Arkansas-born Ensign Nellie Forbush (
Kelli O'Hara) to accept the love of Frenchman Emile De Beque (
Paulo Szot) -- not because he may have once killed a man, but because he fathered two children from a Polynesian woman -- coupled with Lt. Joseph Cable's (
Matthew Morrison) personal disgust with himself over rejecting Liat (
Li Jun Li), the Polynesian beauty born from loudmouth trader Bloody Mary (
Loretta Ables Sayre), simply because of race.
But Sher also almost imperceptibly underscores the racial divide by slyly segregating what lonely African American troops inhabit this island to the sidelines. It's an image that sadly and quite outrageously was the norm in American society 60 years ago, yet it's one that's haunted me ever since taking in this production last Saturday.
If there's any weak moments in the show, it's when the banal barracks banter ensues among officers as they peruse the vast
National Geographic-style map that is curiously devoid of the two fictional islands taking center stage in the musical.
Now, I must confess right here that
South Pacific, for all its innovation, powerful messages and resonant score,
will always hold a special place in my heart. A whopping 30 years ago this fall, I "enjoyed" my lone stage appearance as Lt. Joe Cable in my high school production. Not only do I have fond memories of that effort, but also for the
1958 film with
Mitzi Gaynor,
Rossano Brazzi and
John Kerr; the
2001 television movie with
Glenn Close,
Rade Serbedzija and
Harry Connick, Jr.; and also a couple other stage versions including a late 2001 touring production with
Erin Dilly,
Michael Nouri and
Lewis Cleale.
But Lincoln Center's staging ranks as the best of the lot, and here's why.
If I've had a quibble through the years, it's that typically, very,
very mature men are cast as Emile, the expat who's found refuge in this formerly quiet little corner of the
South Pacific after killing a town bully. For me, the plausibility gap has always been in believing that the young and naïve Nellie would actually fall for someone looking old enough to be her grandfather.
Reminding us fairly early on that Emile is just 44 years old, Sher successfully shakes and stirs a credible concoction with handsome Brazilian baritone Paulo Szot opposite Broadway's
serious musical "It Girl" Kelli O'Hara. The two make an attractive, completely believable pair.
Through her nearly perfect performance, O'Hara effectively evokes another place and time when, tragically, even nice
typical white persons were carefully taught to be racist. In his stirring portrayal of the more evolved expat, Szot succeeded in eliciting genuine tears and chills (from me) as he realizes Nellie's rejection in singing "This Nearly Was Mine."
But it's Morrison as Lt. Cable who provides the most dynamic counterbalance to the question of race, not only as his Princeton-educated, would-be hero falls in love with Liat, but particularly when his moral indignation overcomes his ignorance in the potent "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught."
There are still plenty of great lessons to be learned from this groundbreaking and entertaining landmark musical. But you better make your way to Lincoln Center by June 15 when this school of a revival closes for the summer.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.Related Stories:South Pacific: Some Enchanted Opening Night (April 3, 2008)
Is Johansson's South Pacific Journey Just Happy Talk? (March 14, 2007)
Will Broadway's First-Ever South Pacific Revival Provide Some Enchanted Evenings? (December 19, 2006)
Labels: Bartlett Sher, Musical, Oscar Hammerstein II, Revival, Richard Rodgers, South Pacific, The SOB Review
South Pacific: Some Enchanted Opening NightAlmost exactly 59 years to the day after
Richard Rodgers and
Oscar Hammerstein II's landmark
South Pacific first opened at Broadway's
Majestic Theatre -- and a little more than 54 years after that same production
closed at the
Broadway Theatre -- the classic World War II musical based on
James Michener's "Tales Of The South Pacific" is finally set to open again on a Great White Way stage.
Directed by
Bartlett Sher, the first-ever revival of
South Pacific stars Broadway's current leading lady
Kelli O'Hara as Ensign Nellie Forbush and opera's
Paulo Szot as Emile De Beque. Other castmembers include
Matthew Morrison as Lt. Joseph Cable,
Loretta Ables Sayre as Bloody Mary,
Danny Burstein as Luther Billis and
Li Jun Li as Liat.
Back when
South Pacific first appeared a scant four years after World War II was won, it was revolutionary in its dignified depiction of mixed race couples, as well as in its revulsion over bigotry. The musical would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize and ten Tony Awards, including for Best Musical, Best Actress in a Musical (
Mary Martin) and Best Actor in a Musical (
Ezio Pinza).
Will critics want to wash this show right off of Broadway or will they provide some happy talk? Find out tomorrow as I provide my critics' capsule, along with my own SOB Review. Given that
The New York Times' Ben Brantley attended the same performance I saw, I'll be very interested to compare notes.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.Related Stories:Is Johansson's South Pacific Journey Just Happy Talk? (March 14, 2007)
Will Broadway's First-Ever South Pacific Revival Provide Some Enchanted Evenings? (December 19, 2006)
Labels: Bartlett Sher, Broadway, Danny Burstein, Kelli O'Hara, Matthew Morrison, Musical, Opening Night, Oscar Hammerstein II, Paulo Szot, Revival, Richard Rodgers, South Pacific
