South Pacific: In Concert From Carnegie Hall

There is no shortage of recordings of the musical South Pacific, including the Original Broadway Cast album from 1949 and the Original Soundtrack album from 1958, each of which topped the charts and sold in the millions. So, it seems likely that what drew Decca Broadway, the theater music arm of the Universal Music Group, to recording a special concert version of the show performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City in June 2005 as a benefit (for what is not revealed), and what also led PBS to tape it for the Great Performances series and a DVD, was the cast. The cast is led by Reba McEntire, the country music and TV sitcom star who made a strong impression as a replacement in the title role of a Broadway revival of Annie Get Your Gun in 2001, and Brian Stokes Mitchell, perhaps Broadway's leading leading man, his resume including Ragtime and revivals of Kiss Me, Kate and Man of La Mancha. They, of course, handle the roles of the lovers, USN Ensign Nellie Forbush and French planter Emile de Becque. The third most noticeable role in the work is usually considered to be that of Lieutenant Cable, the second male lead, played in this case by Jason Danieley. But the album cover displays instead photographs of and "starring" designations to McEntire, Mitchell, and Alec Baldwin, the film star who has also appeared on Broadway and who plays the comic character part of Luther Billis; celebrity is celebrity, after all. If all of this sounds like stunt casting, it shouldn't. In fact, McEntire seems as ideally cast as she did in Annie Get Your Gun. Nellie is supposed to be from Little Rock, AR, and every time McEntire opens her mouth and lets out her distinct Oklahoma accent, it seems close enough; much closer, in fact, than Texas native Mary Martin sounded in 1949. And Mitchell's rich baritone voice, while not of the operatic register of Ezio Pinza, the first de Becque, is enormously effective, particularly in a heartfelt rendition of "This Nearly Was Mine" that clearly brought the house down at this live performance. In one sense, this production works better as a purely audio event than it did at Carnegie Hall or on PBS. The politically correct practice of "non-traditional" casting here has meant that all of the non-American roles have been taken by black performers (that means de Becque the Frenchman and various Polynesian natives), which tends to make a hash of the racial issues librettists Oscar Hammerstein II and Joshua Logan were raising in the show. (How is Nellie supposed to be shocked that de Becque has two half-Polynesian children when he and they are obviously black?) Of course, on disc the problem doesn't arise, although it's also true that one misses the comic effect of seeing Baldwin in a grass skirt and floor-mop wig, with coconut shells for breasts, in the cross-dressing "Honey Bun" number. The story line is perhaps more important in this recording than in any previous one, simply because, with nearly 78 minutes of CD time at his disposal, producer Jay David Saks has opted to include more dialogue than ever before in a recording of the show, and the listener can actually follow the general outlines of the plot. Nevertheless, the strength of the performance all comes down to the casting. Danieley and Lillias White as Bloody Mary are excellent; Baldwin is a comic delight; Mitchell is moving; and McEntire is the best of all. ~ William Ruhlmann