Brisbane welcomes South Pacific this summer
30/08/2012
Ground-breaking Broadway show South Pacific will play a season at QPAC in Brisbane this coming summer.
Acclaimed opera star Teddy Tahu Rhodes, Australia’s four time Gold Logie award-winning actress Lisa McCune and Australian musical theatre star Daniel Koek head the stellar cast as Emile de Becque, Nellie Forbush and Lieutenant Joseph Cable.
Considered one of the finest musicals ever written, the score includes Some Enchanted Evening, I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair and There is Nothin’ Like a Dame.
With a cast of 40 and an orchestra twice the size of most musicals, this international hit and landmark production will run for five weeks at the Lyric Theatre, QPAC from December 27.
Directed by Bartlett Sher, South Pacific swept the 2008 Tony Award and played to sold-out houses in New York for two and a half years before starting a tour of the USA that continues today. The show has also had a sell-out London Season and UK tour.
The Australian season of South Pacific marks a new partnership between Opera Australia, Australia’s largest performing arts company, and John Frost, Australia’s largest commercial theatre producer.
The partnership intends to present some of the finest works of the music theatre repertoire in forthcoming years and is delighted to be commencing with South Pacific.
Written in 1949 as a response to the war, South Pacific is full of romantic and uplifting show-stoppers.
Director Bartlett Sher, winner of the 2008 Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for South Pacific has been described by NY Times as “one of the most original and exciting directors not only in American theatre but also in the international world of opera.”
Set on a tropical island during World War II, this is the sweeping romantic story of two couples, threatened by the realities of war. Nellie (Lisa McCune) is an American nurse on a US naval base on a remote island somewhere in the Pacific. Emile (Teddy Tahu Rhodes) is a French plantation owner.
They fall in love but as Emile’s colourful past emerges, Nellie loses her nerve. It may be paradise but their world is still full of prejudice and racism.
The musical was written by Rodgers & Hammerstein and first performed on Broadway in 1949, based on the Pulitzer-winning novel Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener. A film version was made in 1958.
www.qpac.com.au
Lyric Theatre, QPAC, Cnr Grey and Melbourne Streets, South Bank 4101