Despite troubling themes, Guthrie's Haj succeeds with 'South Pacific'

"South Pacific," the big summer musical that opened last weekend at the Guthrie, is a product of its time. Only a few years after World War II, mixed marriages — to say nothing of mixed relationships out of wedlock — were the stuff of dangerous controversy.

When it dawns on Ensign Nellie Forbush that her French fiancée was once involved with a Tonkinese woman, the word that comes to her lips is "colored," and it's as if a bomb has gone off. From that moment, it's a different play.

Of course the U.S. Navy at the time was not too concerned about racial sensitivity; it was engaged in a life-and-death struggle with an enemy everybody referred to as "Japs." Nellie, played by Erin Mackey, has come to the Navy from Little Rock, Ark., about as far as one can get from the South Pacific without leaving the planet.

Slightly more sophisticated than Nellie, but no less bound by his upbringing, is Lt. Joseph Cable (C.J. Eldred), a handsome young white Marine. He loves a local girl, but the idea of marrying her and taking her home to Philadelphia is to him unthinkable.

As the story unfolds, both Forbush and Cable come to see how wrong they are. Their remorse opens the way to a happy ending — if only events will cooperate. This being wartime, they don't.

In 1949, "South Pacific" drew fire from critics who were offended by its message of racial tolerance and especially by Cable's sung lament, "You've Got to be Carefully Taught." In 2016 mixed marriages are no big deal, and the song has lost some of its punch. A bigger deal these days is sexual exploitation.

"South Pacific" comes perilously close to that when Bloody Mary (Christine Toy Johnson), a local woman of entrepreneurial bent, introduces Cable to her beautiful young daughter, Liat (Manna Nichols). The girl speaks no English, so there isn't a lot of conversation before she and Cable are in bed together. Liat's age is unspecified, but when Cable sings that she's "younger than springtime," he's not just talking about her personality. She's young.

Given the troubling themes, it would be understandable if director Joseph Haj produced a careful, evasive, not-too-enjoyable relic. Instead, he's created a living, even lovely, piece of musical theater.

How he did that has a lot to do with casting.

Mackey has played Forbush before. She inhabits the role easily, even if she seems a bit level-headed for the "cockeyed optimist" she claims to be. Other players turn in solid performances, notably Jimmy Kieffer as Luther Billis, Eldred as Cable and Toy Johnson as Bloody Mary.

Visually, the production is stunning. A backdrop of camouflage netting and palm trees gives way to an ocean vista of sunrises, sunsets and brilliantly star-filled skies. A 10-piece orchestra camps out at upstage center, and somehow never becomes a distraction. The chorus of Seabees and nurses populates the set with energy and personality.

But from the moment Edward Staudenmayer opens his mouth to sing the role of the French exile planter, Emile de Becque, the show belongs to him. Staudenmayer's voice is melted chocolate and honey. There can't be many actors who can so convincingly play the part.

To borrow from Oscar Hammerstein: Once you have found him, never let him go.