Blithe Spirit

I'm a pretty ardent Anglophile, I loved Upstairs, Downstairs and Gosford Park, so I was looking forward to Trinity Repertory Company's production of Blithe Spirit. It was my first time seeing a Noel Coward play, and I imagined there'd be lots of people who sounded like the royal family, lots of dry British humor. While this production looks and sounds beautiful, I have to admit that the play simply wasn't as funny as I thought it would be.

When I walked into the theatre, the lavishly detailed 1940s set certainly looked like what I'd imagined. Designer James Schuette has done a wonderful job filling the stage with brocaded furniture, leatherbound books, a gramophone in one corner and a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling. There's jazzy-sounding music playing and a painting that looks like a Picasso is hanging above the mantle. This is a home that oozes refinement and artistic sensibility.

When the play opens, Charles and Ruth, the upper-class couple whose drawing room we are in, are about to have a dinner party. There's lots of banter between the couple, played by Angela Brazil and Fred Sullivan Jr., including about Charles' late first wife, Elvira. The highlight of the evening will be a seance conducted by the mysterious Madame Arcati. Now, Charles doesn't necessarily believe that you can summon the departed from the spirit world, but he's a novelist and hopes the experience will provide fodder for his new book.

One of the funniest moments in the play comes when their guests, Dr. and Mrs. Bradman, played by William Damkoehler and Cynthia Strickland, arrive. Strickland nearly steals the show. She speaks in a high-pitched, rather snooty sounding voice. And costume designer William Lane has dressed her in a pink evening gown that makes her look, as one review described, "like a frosted cupcake." Wish I'd thought of that line.

Barbara Meek's Madame Arcati has a bohemian look about her, wearing a long, flowery skirt and blouse, lots of jewelry and a scarf around her head. It would be easy to make her appear, well, crazy. But Meek plays her as a woman who truly believes in her ability to summon the departed as she matter-of-factly goes about the preparations for the seance. And sound designer Peter Sasha Hurowitz has come up with some great effects.

At first, the seance doesn't appear to be a success, but lo and behold, Charles' first wife, Elvira, played by a very funny Phyllis Kay, comes in from the garden, through the French doors. She's not in a hurry to leave, either, lounging around the drawing room, making catty comments and doing her best to disrupt Charles' current marriage.

Much of the humor in Blithe Spirit comes from Charles' amazement and horror at seeing his dead wife reappear, realizing that he's the only one who can see and hear her, and trying to figure out a way to get her to return to wherever she came from.

Kay is great as Elivra - she's sexy and flirtatious. And Brazil is a good comic actress. I loved her shocked reaction as a vase that Elvira is holding appears be floating through the air. When Ruth finally realizes that Charles isn't mad, that there really was someone else in the house with them, someone she couldn't see or hear, it's one of the funniest moments in the play.

But despite the usual wonderful performances, the beautiful costumes, detailed set, some great one-liners and a very funny ending filled with terrific special effects, Blithe Spirit left me a little bored at times. The novelty of Elvira being in the house and upsetting everything wore off after awhile. There were times when I just got tired of the talk. A little witty banter goes a long way. Curt Columbus' direction is snappy enough. I don't think it's the production, I think it's the play. Maybe it was just a little too upper crust and well-mannered for me, a little stilted and creaky.

Now, I realize that I'm probably in the minority on this. Everyone else around me seemed to be laughing hysterically and having a great time. Maybe I was worn out from my New York trip the previous weekend or maybe I was feeling a little tired. Maybe I've just gotten used to dialogue that's more biting, less polite. I don't know. It could be that drawing-room comedies simply aren't my cup of tea.

Getting in on the act

Hmmm, I'm not sure what to think about the poster for the 2008 Tony Awards.

At first glance, I liked it. There's kind of a classic look, with a formally attired male dancer leaping in midair. The colors are bold and the slogan is catchy: "There's a little bit of Broadway in everyone." It also plays into people's preconceived notions of what a Broadway show - i.e. musical - looks and sounds like. Of course, except for A Chorus Line and the "Puttin on the Ritz" number from Young Frankenstein, I don't know what other musicals fit that bill.

I think the poster probably appeals to people who already like traditional Broadway musicals, with a traditional Broadway sound. And I do love them, so for me, it works fine. But I also think that it's a little bit of preaching to the choir. For people who don't like musicals, or want them to have a younger, more contemporary feel, I'm afraid that it'll just remind them of what they don't like. The invitation to "get in on the act" will be met by a firm "No thanks."

And that's too bad, because there really are so many different kinds of stories on Broadway today, so many different kinds of music. Ok, I realize it's a poster and you have to hit people with one, simple, defining image. What conjures up Broadway better than a dancer in top hat and tails? And maybe there isn't a way to attract people who have already made up their minds that they're not interested, so why bother?

Still, I can't help but wonder whether the message is a little too confining. You'd never realize from the poster that you could find salsa and hip-hop and rock 'n' roll and a little bit of gospel and blues and punk in addition to traditional show tunes. And of course, it ignores plays entirely, because after all, who thinks of play when they think of Broadway?

I'm not sure what I'd do differently. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a very visual person. And as much as I'd like to see Deanna Dunagan's angry, twisted expression from August: Osage County screaming out at me, or sweet, smiling Lin-Manuel Miranda from In the Heights, I realize that you can't focus on a particular show that's in competition this year.

I'm not saying that Broadway should run away from its past, or hide the fact that the big, splashy musicals with their big, splashy dance routines, are the lifeblood of the Great White Way. But you know, that poster could have been from 30 years ago. I'd like some sense, in perhaps the most overused phrase ever, that this is not your grandmother's Broadway.

I just wish there could have been a little more of a hat tip to what's new and innovative, some indication that Broadway is not just a place where you can go to be comforted by the familiar, but a place where you can be challenged and excited by the unexpected.

Passing Strange

Gratuitous Violins rating: ***1/2 out of ****

Usually, I have to wait until a show starts to get a chuckle out of it, but Passing Strange made me smile before I even entered Broadway's Belasco Theatre. Outside, there's a picture of the cast with this quote from Stew, whose semi-autobiographical story I was about to see played out on stage: "Life is a movie starring you. Your whole family is the cast and crew."

That line is funny, playful and brimming with insight - and that's what I loved about Passing Strange. The dialogue is smart, witty and memorable. In fact, I think the last show I saw with so much memorable dialogue was probably the newly minted Pulitzer winner for best drama, Tracy Letts' August: Osage County.

Passing Strange is a minimalist musical - it doesn't have much in the way of lavish sets or big production numbers and the cast doubles up on roles. But it's got terrific performances, an incredibly appealing main character and very big ideas about race and identity and family and what it takes to create meaningful art.

Stew, who wrote the music with his partner Heidi Rodewald, narrates the story accompanied by his rock 'n' roll band. I love David Korins' scenic design that has Stew's band partially submerged into the stage. And the way Stew uses music to tell stories reminded me a little of another singer-songwriter I love - Bob Dylan. (I downloaded some of the songs from the Passing Strange Web site, but until I saw them in the show, I didn't really know what they were about).

Stew, born Mark Stewart, is an easygoing kind of guy. Reviewers usually describe him as "roly-poly" and note the thick black glasses perched on his head. He doesn't at all mind engaging with the audience when a theatergoer who's a little too caught up in the moment shouts to him from the balcony.

A character known only as Youth, an amazing Daniel Breaker, and the rest of the equally talented cast act out scenes from his life. First, we see him in 1970s Los Angeles, a middle-class black teenager rebelling against his loving but strict churchgoing mother, played by Eisa Davis. After that, he embarks on sojourns to hedonistic Amsterdam ("a place that makes Berkeley look like the Bible Belt") and radical Berlin, all in search of "the real."

One thing that's really struck me about all the theatre that I've seen during the past year is how many of the stories revolve around the relationship between parents and children. Obviously, there's lots of drama - and comedy and music - to mine in that relationship. Plus, it's pretty universal. We've all had parents - and our parents have all had children.

Colman Domingo, Chad Goodridge, Rebecca Naomi Jones and De'Adre Aziza are wonderful playing the very different characters Youth meets at different points in his journey. I hope there are many more Broadway roles for all of them. I especially liked Domingo as the church choir director/Berlin performance artist and Goodridge as a drummer in Youth's teenage punk rock band who, after two years, laments that he still hasn't found a sense of rhythm. He's equally adept later, as a left-wing German militant.

It's clear that Youth is a stand-in for Stew: they're dressed alike in red shirts, black pants and black sneakers. And I can't say enough about Breaker. He's energetic and he does so much without even talking as he moves from sheltered teen to wide-eyed world traveler. Just the expressions on his face and the way he slouches in a chair convey so much meaning. At one point, after Stew explains how Passing Strange isn't going to be like a traditional Broadway musical, Breaker leaps across the stage in imitation of a big Broadway dance number. It's so unexpected, hilarious and graceful, and I think it's one of the most delightful moments I've seen on stage - or in the movies or on television for that matter.

In fact, Breaker makes Youth so sweet and likable I couldn't quite square it with the way he treats his mother. In the end his actions, or inactions, make him come across as kind of selfish. But I guess Stew's point is that we all do foolish things when we're young, things that we regret as we grow older, when it's too late to make amends.

I also like the way Passing Strange offers a nod to an earlier generation of African-American expatriate artists, people like James Baldwin and Josephine Baker. It connects Youth's journey to a larger tradition.

I saw Passing Strange and In the Heights on successive nights, and one of the things I appreciated about both of them is that each allows African-American and Latino characters to tell their own stories. Like Mandy Gonzalez' Nina, the young Latina college student whose story is at the heart of In the Heights, Youth is trying to find his place in the world. And Stew reminds us that the world's not always a very accommodating place for a young black man, even one as endearing as Youth.

At one point, the teenage Youth is told that on the one hand, he's "not black enough" but on the other hand, he shouldn't be so black that no one will hire him. He flinches at being stereotyped, but in Berlin he becomes a stereotypical ghetto kid and hip-hop artist. He's delighted and touched to be accepted and trusted by a young woman he meets in Amsterdam. (And it's the subject of "Keys," a beautiful song from Breaker and Aziza.) Yet later he learns, painfully, that there are limits to his acceptance, even by people who appear to be his friends.

In the end, I have some mixed feelings about Passing Strange. My immediate reaction was, well that was different. I liked it and I'm glad I saw it and I'm looking forward to listening to the Broadway cast CD, but I didn't feel compelled to see the show again. For one thing, parts of it are pretty loud. Sometimes I had trouble understanding some of the lyrics. And I thought the second act dragged a bit. (Although Stew's jabs at radical politics in Berlin are priceless. One artist tells Youth: "My pornography is men in business suits making deals.")

Call me shallow, but I guess I did miss the big choreographed dance numbers, showstopping songs and lavish sets. Still, it would be pretty boring if every musical were like that. I'm glad that there's something so unique on Broadway and I love seeing a show that challenges my expectations. And I was pretty captivated by Breaker's performance. Plus, Passing Strange does give you an awful lot to think about afterward. Ok, I'm wavering a little. Maybe I would see it a second time, if only to ponder Stew's words and delight again in Youth's fleet-footed leap across the stage.

Before I saw Passing Strange, I listened to an interview with Stew on the public radio program Studio 360. He talked about some of his inspirations, most notably The Wizard of Oz. That's one reason, he said, why he has African-American actors play the white characters Youth meets in Amsterdam and Berlin.

At first, I wasn't sure whether it worked. I thought maybe the contrast would have been greater if white actors had played those roles. Youth would have seemed even more like a stranger in a strange land. But as I started to think more about the whole Wizard of Oz comparison, I realized that I like what Stew's done. It's actually pretty inspired.

For all of its nontraditional look and storytelling, Youth does go on a pretty traditional journey of self-discovery. It's very Dorothy-like. Kevin Adams' design moves the show from subdued, dim lighting to brilliant color, just like the Wizard of Oz. Youth argues with his mother, just like Dorothy fights with Auntie Em. And he sees some of the same people who were in his life in the first part of the musical playing different roles in his life in the second part, just like The Wizard of Oz.

Youth struggles as a musician because he doesn't yet realize that you have to write about what you know - your life experiences, what excites you, the things you feel passionate about. Then the writing comes easy, because it comes from the heart. That's what's "real." And his epiphany, well, you've seen The Wizard of Oz, so I know you can figure it out. If you need a hint, just close your eyes and click your heels together three times. It'll come to you. I know it will.

A prize winner

Major congratulations to Chicago's Tracy Letts, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for August: Osage County. It's pretty exciting to think that I saw the play that won the Pulitzer, on Broadway, with its original cast. I feel particularly privileged to have seen it with the late Dennis Letts, the playwright's father, in the role of family patriarch Beverly Weston.

August: Osage County is simply one of the funniest, saddest, most wrenching, and most thrilling evenings I've had at the theatre. You may not recognize everyone in this dysfunctional family drama, but if you've ever been part of a family, you'll recognize someone.

Letts is a very witty writer who draws such vivid, complex characters and has some very pointed, biting observations about family relationships. I'm especially impressed with the way he examines the pressures that many women face, sandwiched between caring for their elderly parents and their children and themselves. And August has an amazing cast from Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where Letts is an ensemble member, to bring his words to life.

I know this must be a bittersweet moment for Letts, his joy at winning the award tempered by sadness that his father, who died in February of lung cancer, isn't here to share it with him. The play is dedicated to his father. (He's also the son of writer Billie Letts, author of the bestelling 1995 novel Where the Heart Is, a sweet, wonderful book that's about as far in tone from August: Osage County as you can get.)

But apparently Dennis Letts, a former English professor turned actor, knew his son had written a prize-winning work. Tracy Letts told the Chicago Tribune today, "My dad was much more sure of this than me. He was telling me some months ago that this was a shoo-in. But I didn't believe him."

Here's what Joy Meads has to say about the honor on the Steppenwolf blog: "Many theaters might have balked at August’s ensemble of thirteen, and many audiences may have shied away from an unknown new play clocking in at three plus hours. Together, in the belief that innovation requires a little audacity, we took a chance and embraced this play."

Letts, in an interview with Associated Press theatre critic Michael Kuchwara, agrees that Steppenwolf is one of the very few places he could have gone with a play on the scale of August: Osage County. "We always look for opportunities to get members of our ensemble (which numbers more than two dozen) engaged in any given play. We are actor-driven."

Some elements of the play are loosely autobiographical, and Letts says that the idea for the drama had been rolling around in his head for years. "The stars aligned in the right way with the right actors and at the right time."

So, congratulations to Tracy Letts and everyone else at Steppenwolf. And a special hat tip to Steve on Broadway, who was an early and eloquent champion of the play after seeing it in Chicago - in August coincidentally! Steve, your review definitely convinced me to spend a few hours with the Weston clan in Osage County, Oklahoma, and I'm so glad I did.

In the Heights

Let me review my theatre geek checklist: Playbills of every show I've seen: got them. Multiple cast recordings of my favorite scores: ditto. Lavish coffee table books from my favorite musicals: absolutely. Guilty pleasure: I think I've found one!

Ok, technically, In The Heights, at Broadway's Richard Rodgers Theatre, is too well-reviewed to be a guilty pleasure, but I'm claiming it as one anyway. The plot is a little weak - it didn't have me sitting on the edge of my seat in suspense. But the musical has loads of charm, incredibly energetic dancing, and a score that combines hip-hop and salsa with more traditional Broadway sounds. It's also got funny, heartwarming characters and a terrific New York City scene of a set.

I've never been to the Washington Heights neighborhood at the top of Manhattan that In the Heights celebrates, but composer Lin-Manuel Miranda and choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler have combined to present a real sense of place. To me, this is New York City: a close-knit community where the sounds and the food might be different but the values are the same as you'll find anywhere else in America.

And Anna Louizos' set, with its tenements and fire escapes and graffiti, the corner bodega and the little hair salon, is one of my all-time favorites. When I first saw it, I immediately thought of Sesame Street. (I mean that in a good way!) It has kind of a gritty yet wholesome look. I would not have been at all surprised to see Big Bird comes strolling by and learn that today we were going to talk about the letter "A."

In the Heights centers around three hot summer days in the lives of three generations of New Yorkers living in a neighborhood in transition. At the center is Mandy Gonzalez' Nina, who may or may not return to Stanford University, where she's had a difficult freshman year. While I found Gonzalez' performance very appealing, her story unfolds in a way that seems a little far-fetched.

Her sense of anxiety and feelings of failure seem very real and honest. But what her parents, Kevin and Camila, played by Carlos Gomez and Priscilla Lopez, are prepared to do to ensure that she can go back to Stanford seems excessive and defies logic. (The cynic in me wondered why she didn't live at home and go to Columbia, or get just as fine an education at a state university, saving her hard-working parents a ton of money. But In the Heights is not a musical for a cynic.) Gonzalez has alot going on - maybe too much. She's also romantically involved with Benny, played by Christopher Jackson, the African-American dispatcher who works for her father's car service, and her father does not approve.

I do appreciate the way book writer Quiara Alegria Hudes includes a variety of Latino characters in the musical. They're not cookie-cutter, interchangeable characters either. They come from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and they each have their own stories. I just wish we'd heard more from some of them.

I know that Miranda's Usnavi, who owns the corner bodega, is getting heaps of praise. Miranda, who conceived of the idea for In the Heights and started to write the music while he was a sophomore in college, is fun to watch. He has a great presence on stage, especially as he raps his way through the opening number. He even name checks Cole Porter. How cool is that! Perhaps my expectations were too high, but he didn't dazzle me as much as I thought he would. Part of it is a misunderstanding on my part. I thought he'd have a more central role in the plot when really, In the Heights is mainly Nina's story. There were other characters I enjoyed just as much, including Robin de Jesus' Sonny, Usnavi's cousin who works at the bodega and provides some great comic relief.

As Nina, Gonzalez simply won my heart. For me, she was one of In the Heights' most memorable characters. She just looked so youthful and sweet. She's sincere and smart and loyal and and lively. She's passionate and loving and wants nothing more than to live up to the expectations that everyone in the neighborhood, from her parents on down, have for her.

Gonzalez seems so true to life as a young woman with a foot in two worlds, who left her close-knit neighborhood for a great adventure on the other side of the country. She represents the first-generation American, the first-generation college student, the child upon whom immigrant parents heap so many hopes and dreams. Her first year away from home has been a difficult one, socially and academically.

When Nina sings about trying to find her place in the world, feeling like she's lost her way, wondering what her life would have been like if she'd grown up in Puerto Rico and had never seen Manhattan, it's incredibly moving. And she's the one who, in the years to come, will have to decide how much to assimilate and how much of her culture to retain.

At a time when there's considerable debate over immigration, In the Heights is a joyous reminder of the variety and vitality that newcomers from all over the world bring to this country. Nina's parents, Usnavi, and the other residents of this one upper Manhattan block are working hard to build small businesses, making sacrifices to ensure a better future for their children and watching out for their neighbors, all the while trying to carve out their own small slice of the American Dream.

In the Heights is a place to laugh, to get caught up in the stories of its very appealing characters, to be amazed at some incredibly energetic dancing, to feel your fingers and toes tapping to the beat of the music, and to watch a quintessentially American story unfold before your eyes. It's a place I loved visiting and where I'd love to return.

Gypsy

The first time I ever saw Gypsy on stage was last summer in New York, as part of the City Center Encores series. Even a musical theater novice like myself could see that the transformation of Laura Benanti from plain-Jane Louise to glamorous burlesque performer and stripper Gypsy Rose Lee was stunning. Last Sunday, I saw Gypsy again, at Broadway's St. James Theatre, and it was even better.

When you're writing about Gypsy, it seems more traditional to talk first about Mamma Rose rather than June and Louise - the daughters she tries, with singleminded devotion and all the subtlety of a bulldozer, to mold into stars. In fact, people seem to refer to the various incarnations over the years by who played Rose: the 1959 orginal, with Ethel Merman, followed by revivals in 1974 with Angela Lansbury, 1989 with Tyne Daly and 2003 with Bernadette Peters. I looked up the credits for those productions and I've never even heard of any of the actresses who played Louise.

Mamma Rose is such a strong, overwhelming presence from the moment she comes marching down the aisle and onto the stage. Even though the musical is called Gypsy, and based on her daughter's memoir, in many ways it's Rose's story. And Patti LuPone is a powerhouse in the role. But while I'd never seen LuPone on stage, I certainly knew of her. Even though I wasn't really familiar with her as a singer, I knew and loved her from the television series Life Goes On in the early '90s.

Benanti, on the other hand, was pretty much an unknown quantity. I knew her from the Broadway cast recording of The Wedding Singer, but I'd never seen her perform. Over the past year, I've watched more than a few shows in which a character goes on a life-transforming journey. But I can't think of another one quite as terrific as Louise's in Gypsy. Yes, there's something thrilling and chilling hearing LuPone belt out Gypsy's classic numbers. But there's something about Benanti's portrayal that just totally blew me away.

At the start of the show, Louise, her hair in pigtails, wearing slightly baggy, boyish clothes, looks kind of like a tomboy. She knows she's not the daughter that Mamma Rose is preparing for stardom, that's reserved for Leigh Ann Larkin's June, the supposedly prettier, more talented sister. But when June, having had enough of her domineering mother, heads off to make her own way in the world, Mamma turns to Louise. Now, she'll be the daughter who becomes a star. Louise's first attempts at that role are kind of awkward. The way Benanti moves and speaks conveys a sense of tentativeness and insecurity.

By the end, with her hair up, wearing makeup and dressed in evening clothes, Benanti's Louise has become a different person to go with her new name. Major credit belongs to the great costumes by Martin Pakledinaz, wig and hair design by Paul Huntley and makeup by Angelina Avallone. I almost felt like I was seeing a completely different person on stage, the transformation was so dramatic and complete.

But it's more than just nicer clothes, hair and makeup. By the end of the musical, even Louise's personality has changed. And this inner transformation is Benanti's alone. Seeing her on stage as a stripper, she's funny, teasing, sexy and radiant. In her dressing room, with Mamma Rose, she's confident and assertive. It's truly a remarkable performance, and I could watch it again and again.

One of the things I appreciate most about Gypsy is that while it may be nearly 50 years old, the plot, about the ultimate stage mother, still seems so relevant. It's as current as preschool beauty pageant contestants, preteen athletic phenoms, starlets and singers, or even the latest spelling prodigy. It's about the expectations parents have for their children, how they sometimes measure their own success by their children's achievement, and the resentment that is often created as a result.

As Mamma Rose, LuPone embodies every parent who ever tried to live their life through their children out of a misguided sense that they're doing the right thing, out of a desire to give their children the advantages and career that they were denied. I think it's a role that could easily fall into an over-the-top performance, a Joan Crawford Mommie Dearest "no more wire hangers" caricature.

But LuPone is so skillful that she makes Rose a tragic, yet sympathetic character. She wants so much for her daughters to have what she didn't have that she loses sight of what they want. She pushes a man who truly loves her out of her life, and in the end, when Louise doesn't need her anymore, she's left only with her own sadly unfulfilled dreams.

I loved LuPone's performance from the Encores production. But I think she's even kicked it up a notch for Broadway. She seemed even more determined this time to make her daughters stars no matter what. She seemed more obsessive, more everything, and it makes the ending even sadder.

Watching LuPone "act" a song is amazing. She's brilliant singing the optimism of "Everything's Coming Up Roses" that ends Act I. When the song got a standing ovation over the summer, I turned to the person next to me and said, "That was incredible." "Just wait," he advised me, "Just wait." He was right. With the finale of "Rose's Turn," when Mamma Rose asks why she couldn't have been a star, the anguish on her face is so real and so devastating and so unforgettable. LuPone's rendition was even more powerful than I remembered from the first time.

In fact, everything is as good or better on Broadway as it was over the summer. The funny songs, like "Have an eggroll, Mr. Goldstone," seemed funnier. The advice that Louise gets in "You Gotta Get a Gimmick," performed by strippers Tessie Tura (Alison Fraser), Mazeppa (Lenora Nemetz) and Electra (Marilyn Caskey), seemed even more hilarious.

And Boyd Gaines, as Rose's long-suffering companion, Herbie, is wonderful. This time, he seemed even more enchanted and exasperated by her, and in the end, even more hurt when she couldn't stop being the stage mother long enough to marry him. I felt so sorry for this dignified, decent man who wanted nothing more than to make a home for Rose and her daughters, and who didn't deserve to be treated with such disdain.

I can certainly see why Gypsy is considered a classic. The book by Arthur Laurents has so many strong, interesting characters. When I think about shows I didn't enjoy as much, it's because the characters haven't drawn me in, haven't engaged me. I simply didn't care about them as much. There's no chance of that with Gypsy. The words and music, by Stephen Sondheim and the late Jule Styne are sweet and funny and tender and rich. When you hear songs like "Everything's Coming Up Roses" and "Rose's Turn" played by a 25-piece orchestra on stage, it's pretty powerful.

While Gypsy isn't my favorite musical - there are simply too many others that I love equally - it certainly has become one of my favorites, and one of my most unforgettable experiences at the theatre.

"You've Got to Be Carefully Taught"

There's an interesting two-page spread about South Pacific in the current issue of Newsweek. It's a review that also recounts the show's history, some of its themes, and the relevance of its plot about World War II in the Pacific to audiences in 2008.

I knew that one of the stories, the romance between Lt. Joe Cable and a beautiful young Polynesian woman named Liat, was daring when South Pacific opened on Broadway in 1949. But until I read Cathleen McGuigan's article, I didn't realize the full extent of the controversy behind one of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical's most memorable songs, "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught."

Cable, played in the current Lincoln Center revival by Matthew Morrison, sings the song as a retort to Kelli O'Hara's nurse Nellie Forbush, who says she can't help the way she feels about the two half-Polynesian children of French planter Emile De Beque, and breaks off their relationship. The lyrics take issue with the notion that human beings are born bigoted. We have to be taught to hate as children, the song says, it doesn't come naturally.

It's a pretty clear message and today, it seems obvious. (Also, what's the chance today that a song from musical theatre would cause such an uproar?) Of course it's absurd to think that we're born hating anyone. I mean, the song's sentiments would be perfectly at home on Barney or Sesame Street for heaven's sake:

"You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a different shade
You've got to be carefully taught."

But according to Laurence Maslon, author of the new book The South Pacific Companion, there was pressure during the out-of-town tryouts to change "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" or to cut it from the show entirely. Thankfully, lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II refused.

James Michener, who wrote Tales of the South Pacific, on which the musical was based, recalled "The authors replied stubbornly that this number represented why they had wanted to do this play, and that even if it meant the failure of the production, it was going to stay in."

In this weekend's New York Times, reporter Larry Bloom also mentions the controversy in a story recalling South Pacific's tryout at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven, Conn. Until "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught," Bloom says, Rodgers and Hammerstein hadn't made social commentary a hallmark of their work.

Bloom writes, "Michener recalled in The World Is My Home that an agitated man accosted him at New Haven’s Union Station and warned: “Your play will fail if you leave that song in about racial prejudice. It’s ugly, it’s untimely and it’s not what patrons want to hear when they go to a musical.”

Well, thankfully that man was wrong. South Pacific opened on Broadway on April 7, 1949, with "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" intact, and played for 1,925 performances, closing on Jan. 16, 1954.

But apparently the show's success didn't silence the bigots. McGuigan writes that when South Pacific was was performed in Atlanta in the early 1950s, "it was denounced on the floor of the Georgia Legislature, for Cable's song (termed propaganda "inspired by Moscow") and for the theme of interracial relationships: "Intermarriage produces half-breeds," said one legislator. "And half-breeds are not conducive to the higher type of society."

Scholar Andrea Most, in an article for Theatre Journal in 2000 about the politics of race in South Pacific, says that one Georgia state legislator even claimed that a song justifying interracial marriage was a threat to the American way of life. Most writes that Hammerstein expressed surprise at the idea that "anything kind and humane must necessarily originate in Moscow."

I guess you could say that the whole issue sounds quaint and outdated, with little relevance for today's audience. And in a year when Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, is running for president, that view is understandable. But the lesson behind "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" is one we can still use. And am I the only one who thinks that the controversy about interracial relationships and their supposed threat to the American way of life sounds familiar in a more current context?

In Newsweek, McGuigan also includes the very moving coda that appears on a scrim at the end of the South Pacific revival. For me, it put what I'd just seen in perspective and gave the show an added level of resonance. I won't repeat it here in case you're going to see South Pacific and you want to be surprised, but you can find it on Page 2 of her article.

The South Pacific Companion, by the way, will be published on May 6. It covers the show's Broadway debut, its many incarnations over the decades, and the current revival. Maslon is a professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and coauthor of the companion volume to the excellent PBS series Broadway: The American Musical.

For a little taste of what the South Pacific sounds like today, you can hear Maslon and some of the principals involved in the current production in this interview on National Public Radio. And the Lincoln Center Theater Review has a special issue devoted to South Pacific, which you can read online.

Just hearing a few brief clips of that gorgeous score has me wishing I could see South Pacific again, this time from the orchestra section. Since that's unlikely, I'll have to be content with the cast CD, which will be released on May 27.