South Pacific' sails back to B'way
Wednesday, March 12th 2008, 4:00 AM
Paulo Szot and Kelli O'Hara share some enchanted evening in 'South Pacific' at Lincoln Center.
Can you imagine Tom Brokaw in "South Pacific"?
An Oscar-winning film producer could.
The producer - who shall remain nameless - pitched a Broadway revival of the 1949 Tony- and Pulitzer-winning musical in which the TV newsman's deep, distinctive voice would be heard talking about the greatest generation during the overture. It would ease audiences into the World War II era of the show, he figured.
Ted Chapin, president of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, which grants permissions to perform shows from the composers' catalogue, recalls his reaction to the concept: "I said, 'Hmmm. Gee, well, I'll think about it.'"
Then he washed the idea right outta his mind.
Over the years, Chapin, who has worked at R&H since 1981, has done that with a number of "South Pacifics" eyeballing Broadway, including a 1986 Los Angeles production starring Richard Kiley.
From high schools to professional theaters, nearly 500 productions of the wartime love story are mounted around the world each year.
Yet it has taken more than a half-century for one to return to Broadway, where "South Pacific" last ended a five-year run in 1954. The revival opening April 3 at the Vivien Beaumont is staged by Bartlett Sher, who directed "The Light in the Piazza" at the same theater.
What took so long for plucky U.S. Navy Nellie Forbush and French planter Emile De Becque to have another enchanted evening on the Great White Way? Casting and timing were key considerations.
"Over the years, people would poke around and call me to say, 'Hey, I have an idea,'" says Chapin. "Most of those ideas involved productions created around a star, which didn't make sense. There are two parts that are very complex and very important."
The new production stars double Tony nominee Kelli O'Hara ("The Light in the Piazza," "The Pajama Game") and Brazilian opera star Paulo Szot.
"As for the question of timing, I wish I could say there was an era when a show about war and racism wasn't relevant," says Chapin. "But the post-World War II mindset brought its own challenges.
"Some directors have been afraid of audiences coming in and not understanding what audiences understood in 1949," he continues. (Hence, that Brokaw brainchild.) Chapin says he was more inclined to greenlight a production that trusted audiences.
Broadway's new "South Pacific" has been in the air at least since June 2005, when Reba McEntire and Brian Stokes Mitchell co-starred in a concert version at Carnegie Hall. Lincoln Center's artistic director, Andre Bishop, called Chapin afterward. "He said, 'I've always wanted to do 'South Pacific,'" says Chapin. "That's when the light went on."
"Piazza" was running at Lincoln Center then. Chapin, who'd seen early versions of that show composed by Richard Rodgers' grandson Adam Guettel, admired Sher's work. "I'd seen the evolution of the show and saw how Bart kept working and honing," says Chapin.
In July 2005, over lunch across the street from Lincoln Center at Fiorello's, Chapin told Bishop that if he wanted "South Pacific," it was his. "He was pleased and said 'Put "The Light in the Piazza" crew on it.'"
Without revealing secrets of Sher's version, Chapin says it honors tradition and adds something "fresh and new."
And it's not Tom Brokaw.
jdziemianowicz@nydailynews.com
