South Pacific – Chichester Festival Theatre

It’s a familiar show, but there’s nothing clichéd about this production. As a fine fifteen-piece band, high above the stage out of sight, conducted by MD Cat Beveridge, launches into Richard Rodgers’s evocatively scored overture, we watch an otherworldly solo ballet sequence by Sera Maehara alone on the big round thrust stage. Then she is surrounded by American GIs, marching. It’s a neat way of signalling the serious and dark cultural clash which lies at the heart of this ever-topical piece.

Full as it is of hummable melodies, South Pacific is a profoundly political piece and this production brings that out: Racism and the need to overcome it is, if anything, more urgent now even than it was in 1949. Of course, you can’t dismiss a man

(or wash him right out of your hair) simply because his late partner was Polynesian. And despite, their need to repel the invading Japanese, what right have these Americans to be in this ocean paradise anyway – criticising local people and their culture?

Julian Ovenden is the best

Emile I’ve ever seen. He is self-effacing, charming, attractive and, clearly, an attentive father. And that voice! Gina Beck is a lively match, shifting convincingly from loving to critical and from embarrassed to contrite. The support cast is strong too with Joanna Ampil standing out as Bloody Mary and Keir Charles bringing oodles of character to Luther Billis.

All in all, a pretty remarkable achievement considering the circumstances under which this production has developed. It was originally scheduled for 2020 but had to be cancelled. 27,000 Covid tests have gone into the making of it. Watch out for the transfer.