Word: hammersteins
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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South Pacific (music by Richard Rodgers; lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein 2nd; book adapted from James A. Michener's Tales of the South Pacific by Mr. Hammerstein & Joshua Logan; produced by the Messrs. Rodgers & Hammerstein in association with Leland Hayward & Mr. Logan) opened to an advance sale of $500,000 and the kind of notices ("utterly captivating"-"truly great") that should keep it on Broadway for years. As an all-star production, it almost merits such notices. As a show, it does...
...quality, the show is by no means up to the production. But it is surefire popular stuff, filled with surefire popular stuffing. Hammerstein & Logan have contrived a shrewd mixture of tear-jerking and rib-tickling, of sugar & spice and everything twice. Their musical play is far superior to the usual libretto nonsense; it is quite the equal, in fact, of the usual movie yarn. To all those for whom the plot's the thing, for whom heartbeats are more important than dance steps, South Pacific will seem-as it may well be-a perfect union of film and footlights...
South Pacific has genuine story value, but it is not the integrated work that Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel was. In South Pacific, Rodgers' music provides only a score, not a scaffolding. The score has its very decided merits: there are the bang and the brio of I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair and I'm in Love With a Wonderful Guy; there is Some Enchanted Evening, a fit consort for Oklahoma!'s beautiful morning. All in all, however, Rodgers' fine talent seemed far more individual in the days when...
This is not a facetious answer. Take the "No" part of it first. "South Pacific" is not "really that good" because like all shows, it is not perfect. For one thing, Oscar Hammerstein II has succumbed to a fit of moralizing for a few minutes in the second act, and although it is only a passing fit, one that is practically flippant compared with the attack that laid "Allegro" low, it is nonetheless a blotch, a mar, a flaw. And the song that does most of the moralizing, called "You've Got To Be Taught"--the full line...
...have already heard more than enough about most of its other virtues, so there is nothing left to say. Except that somehow, the name of Joshua Logan has not yet got into this. As co-author with Hammerstein of the book, and as director of the entire show, musical numbers and all, Logan is surely responsible for a good number of "South Pacific's" qualities...