This coming weekend Toledo is the place for sunny beaches, white foamy waves, and warm sand and sun.
Even in February. And just in time for Valentine’s Day.
Only thing is, nurses, soldiers, sailors, and islanders will be there too. Oh, and there’s a war going on.
You’ll find all this only at the Valentine Theatre Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. when the Toledo Opera Association presents the season’s final production, South Pacific, the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical from Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, based on the Pulitzer-Prize winning novel by James Michener.
“We're trying to beat off the cold of January here and go to the South Pacific, where it's nice and warm and there are breezes,” said James Norman, the opera’s general director, and the production’s director. “We're just trying to do some different programming for our Toledo opera audiences, and they’re responding,”
Headlining the cast is soprano Claire Leyden as Ens. Nellie Forbush; local baritone Keith Phares as Emile de Becque; tenor Mike Schwitter as Lt. Joseph Cable; and soprano Kamryn Loy as Bloody Mary. The Toledo Opera Association resident artists also have roles: baritone Robbie Raso has a substantial comic role as Luther Billis; Sarah Rachel Bacani portrays Liat; Emily Cotten is Ens. Dinah Murphy; and Brady DelVecchio is the Professor.
The plot centers on a nurse, Forbush, who falls for a Frenchman while stationed in the title location during World War II, though she struggles to accept that he has mixed race children.
A subplot involves another couple similarly dealing with the consequences of a mixed race relationship.
“This is my fourth time directing South Pacific, said Norman. “Unfortunately, it's a show that still is relevant today, even though it was written in 1949 with its Pulitzer-Prize winning script.”
Beyond that, he said, the score and scope certainly make the musical a good candidate for an opera company to perform.
“We think [South Pacific] is the best written because the music just ties in so well. It's beautiful. The script is tight, and you can relate to these characters. It's a show that has a message for everyone, and it's appropriate for all ages.”
The bottom line? “It's just a fun, rollicking time.”
The story follows two romances, so it’s perfect for Valentine’s Day.
Domonique Glover returns as the choreographer, and J. Ernest Green returns to conduct.
And he’s excited to do so.
Maestro Green, a regular in Toledo, said he didn’t hesitate when he received the offer to work on South Pacific.
“I think I didn't even let [Norman] get the full sentence out of his mouth,” Green said. “He said, ‘we're doing South Pacific,’ and I said, yes.”
Without checking his schedule with his agent, he added.
“First of all, I love this company. It’s so special, and I love being with these guys,” Green said. “But this show is also just extraordinary. Just from a pure compositional standpoint, it's just brilliant. There's a magic to South Pacific that is just undeniable.”
The music connects the big musical numbers, songs like “Bali Ha'i,” “I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair,” “Some Enchanted Evening,” “There Is Nothing Like a Dame,” “Happy Talk,” “Younger Than Springtime,” and “I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy.”
“You just listen to it, and you're like, that's amazing. How do they do that? So I just think you can't go wrong with this show,” Green said, adding that the opera has assembled a dream cast.
Troubles in paradise
In World War II, the South Pacific, a romantic land of palm trees and warm, sandy beaches cradled by the blue ocean and blanketed by a warm sun, was being marred by hellish battles, tanks, guns, bombs, and the wounded and the dead when Americans set up on the islands to evict the Japanese.
Most of the young American troops had never seen foreign lands or foreign faces. While the beauty of the South Pacific was intoxicating, these new faces unleashed something ugly.
That ugliness isn’t named until the second act when Lt. Joseph Cable, a young Marine sent to the South Pacific to perform a dangerous and crucial spy mission, sings about it with self-loathing.
Mike Schwitter, performing the role for the second time, said Cable is young, well-educated, and probably from a military family. Looking for a fling, he accepts the offer of Bloody Mary, a native entrepreneur of just about everything, of her daughter, Liat. He instantly falls in love with her and wants to marry her. Except ...
Schwitter thinks Cable isn’t prejudiced, but he worries about what will happen when he brings her home.
“He says, ‘I love Liat, but I can't marry her,’” Schwitter said of his character. “And I don't think it's because he doesn't want to. I think he's worried about bringing her back to the States. I don't think he's worried about how people would see him. I think it's the heat that she would receive and their marriage.”
“You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught” received “heat” from audiences and critics alike after South Pacific debuted in 1949, just five years after World War II, during which thousands of Japanese-Americans were interned in camps, millions of Jews had been slaughtered during the Holocaust, Jim Crow laws ruled the South, and prejudice was ingrained throughout the rest of the United States.
During a tour in Georgia, legislators proposed a law to ban entertainment “justifying interracial marriage [that] was implicitly a threat to the American way of life."
Rodgers and Hammerstein refused to pull the song.
After all, Schwitter said, “The punch line of the whole show is, “you've got to be carefully taught.” It's the shortest song in the show. It's what it all boils down to.
“It’s “nature versus nurture. You're not born with prejudice. No one is,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ens. Nellie Forbush, a nurse, falls hard in love with Frenchman Emile de Becque who lives on a hillside on the island.
De Becque seems perfect, but he has a secret that uncovers what’s not so pretty about the “Cock-Eyed Optimist” from Little Rock.
Claire Leyden, who performs Nellie, sees something of herself in Nellie. “She has the biggest heart, and she's so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and a ‘Cock-Eyed Optimist,’” she said, referring to the song Nellie sings about her sunny view of life.
“She's so curious and wants to know more about people, know more about the world, and in so doing, realizes how sheltered she was growing up, and that there's so much more to the world than she ever had a conception of,” Leyden said. “And in some ways, it's hard to face, and you learn some hard truths about yourself, but I think her heart is so big that it conquers everything.”
What she faces is that de Becque has two children by his late islander wife, and Nellie faces what she’s been taught in Little Rock
“This show is 75 years on and still hits those heartstrings in the same way,” Leyden said. “And it's important for art like this to help us open our eyes. You get to watch somebody like Nellie, who is a deeply good human being, encounter her prejudices. I think that that can be destabilizing when everything that you know all of a sudden isn't the truth.”
Nellie must make a choice. Can a girl from Little Rock throw her safe world away and live in a strange place with people who don’t look like people she’s grown up with, even if it is paradise.
“We've all had those moments where the rug gets pulled out under you, and you have to stand back up,” Leyden said.
Baritone Keith Phares, a professor at BGSU and a performer returning to the Valentine’s stage after the Merry Widow in 2024, plays Emile de Becque.
He was 17 when he last performed the Frenchman.
“Yeah, that sport coat out of my dad's closet was great,” Phares said with a laugh.
The musical glossed over de Becque’s past life in France, where he accidentally killed a man who was bullying the town.
“He is unapologetically himself all the time,” Phares said. “He makes no apologies to anybody.”
De Becque, who had previously refused to accompany Cable on his spying mission, accepts after Nellie shies away from his half-Polynesian children, and Phares thinks it’s because de Becque feels he has nothing to live for.
“He may believe that he's lost Nellie forever at that point, and so he might as well go out and fight for something,” he said.
Very human
The heavy topics of love, war, and prejudice are ameliorated some by the comic characters of Luther Billis, portrayed by resident artist Robbie Raso, and Bloody Mary, performed by Kamryn Loy.
Both characters are a bit shady but both are very human.
Loy says Bloody Mary might be a bit shady, but “she doesn’t really have a lot of choices.”
“She's definitely kind of like the comic relief in this, like her and Billis,” Loy said. “She loves to interact with the soldiers, she makes them laugh. She sells them little trinkets. She sells them grass skirts.”
She chooses Lieutenant Cable and wants him to marry her daughter, Liat. The alternative would be a middle-aged French planter.
“I really think that at the end of the day, this woman is a mother, because out of all these guys, she picks this one guy for her daughter. She chose wisely, because he actually does end up falling in love with her daughter,” Loy said.
Luther Billis is the male equivalent of Bloody Mary, said Raso. While his part is not huge, Billis is more important than just comic relief.
“He's kind of a scoundrel in the sense that he's harmless, but he's operating an illegal laundry business in the military. He's operating an illegal shower and bath club,” Raso said. “So he has a few little illegal ventures here and there. He's just kind of in it for himself.”
Yet, Billis is still a soldier and knows his duty.
“He causes a diversion that lets Joe Cable and Emile de Becque land on Marie Louise island, so he’s kind of important for the plot, despite being the butt of the joke,” Raso said.
While art demands heartbreak and tragedy, in the end, two decent people wrestle with the ugliness of prejudice and conquer it.
“It's a testament to people like ... Cable and ... Nellie that they exist within the structures of the society that they grew up in and the worlds that they know, and still see beyond it to the heart of the other people,” Leyden said.
That, in addition to the words and music and paradise, make a musical beloved and timeless.
Because the performances fall on Valentine’s Day weekend, the opera inviting patrons to a prelude dinner before the show at 5:15 p.m. Friday at the Chop House, 300 N. Summit St. The cost to attend this dinner with creatives is $100 a person. On Feb. 16, the TOA will host a Sunday FunDay Brunch at Hannon’s Block, 619 Monroe St. Cost is $50 apiece.
South Pacific will be performed at the Valentine Theatre, 410 Adams St., on Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are from $39 to $139 on both days. For tickets, visit toledoopera.org or call 419-255-7464.
Contact Heather Denniss at:
hdenniss@theblade.com
First Published February 9, 2025, 1:00 p.m.
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