Singalong-a-South Pacific... there is nothin’ like a classic!
South Pacific arrives in London having opened in Chichester last year. We’re lucky to have it – with top choreography by Ann Yee, a fine cast and, of course, some of the best-loved tunes in the American songbook.
Yet college kids in the States today revile South Pacific because of its alleged racial stereotyping. How stupid is that? In 1949, Rodgers and Hammerstein were miles ahead of their time in depicting and condemning racial prejudice, very specifically in the number You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught.
The action centres on moody French plantation owner Emile de Becque, whose rather unlikely love – a weakness in the book, in my view – for the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Ensign Nellie Forbush is torpedoed when she discovers his previous relationship – and kids – with a Polynesian woman. Her views may seem appalling now. But Julian Ovenden acts and sings Emile so brilliantly, and Gina Beck’s Nellie is so convincingly smitten (I’m In Love With A Wonderful Guy), that their affair emits a life-affirming warmth that wins out.
The production bigs up the part of the islander Bloody Mary (Joanna Ampil, terrific), whose story comes with a heightened wartime sorrow. Her daughter Liat – played by Sera Maehara, who has a superb opening dance solo – is given more prominence than usual in her love story with Lieut Cable (Rob Houchen).
Yet for all R&H’s overtly preachy agenda, Daniel Evans’s direction delivers maximum hummability. The lady next to me couldn’t stop herself from joining in Some Enchanted Evening (is there a better distillation of love at first sight?), There Is Nothin’ Like A Dame (randy as you like), I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair (a feminist fiesta of towels) and the fake-exotic Bali Ha’i.
This production struck me as both a really good night out and also a spirited defence of an endangered Broadway classic.
In Anything Goes, ecstasy comes just before the interval. That’s when the entire company belts the hell out of the title song, a clattering mass tap-out with the entire cast stacked high on three decks of a liner. It is reason alone to see Cole Porter’s 1934 masterpiece, which opened last summer to deserved raves and is now reprised with its zing intact.
Kerry Ellis, as the singer Reno, dances like a maniac without breaking sweat and the cast includes Denis Lawson as a cuddly gangster, with Simon Callow as the barking businessman and Bonnie Langford as the snob mother.
Fogey old England is represented by a toff – the tweedy Haydn Oakley – in whom the voice of P.G. Wodehouse (who wrote the book with Guy Bolton) is unmistakable. I Get A
Kick Out Of You, Easy To Love and It’s De-Lovely are the takehome numbers.
This ocean-going hit is guaranteed to cheer you up. Book a berth before it sails away.
I wasn’t looking forward to this (as I imagined it) musicalisation of 101 Dalmatians but I have to say it knocks the spots off Crufts for sheer entertainment. The actor Douglas Hodge wrote the music and lyrics, and the result is a madly eccentric version of Dodie Smith’s classic novel, adapted by Zinnie
Harris. The puppetry is ace: the mummy and daddy dalmatians are uncannily canine and, unlike the Disney version, they sniff other dogs’ bottoms. Their plethora of puppies pop up, delightfully, as hand puppets in every crevice of the set.
Cruella De Vil is played hilariously by Kate Fleetwood as an online fashion influencer whose meanness gives the show its edge. The songs are forgettable, but the show’s sense of fun and cartoonish invention make this a tasty doggie treat for humans of all ages.