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Trevor Nunn's much-anticipated South Pacific opens next week. As the director records, it has not been an easy ride.
DAY 1, October 9:
Somebody wise once described the only purpose of day one of rehearsals as "to get to day two". The nerves, self-consciousness, fear and unfamiliarity make it more or less impossible for any meaningful work to be done. Some of the company are in The Relapse and Luther, and some, such as Philip Quast (Emile de Becque, a French planter) and Nick Holder (Luther Billis, a Seabee) know the National Theatre very well from past productions; but for many of the youngsters, I can see that as 20 or so heads of department introduce themselves at the meet-and-greet session, the experience is near overwhelming. For Lauren Kennedy (Ensign Nellie Forbush), who has only worked in America, it is in every sense another country.
I love these gatherings because not only do they start the bonding process of the acting company, but they increase the feeling for everybody in the sprawling labryinthine National that we are a family - and whatever we achieve, we do it together.
I talk about the background to the show, Rodger's centenary, Hammerstein's career, and I can see on a lot of faces, the surprise of discovering how these two men of genius transformed music theatre into what we now take for granted. I explained that the title of the show, which has come to mean "a love story in paradise" only meant one thing in 1949 : the war in the South Pacific, during which 80,000 Americans had lost their lives.
A few people in the cast turn out to be very knowledgeable about the events of that war, but, rather shockingly, the majority are learning what happened between Pearl Harbour and Hiroshima for the first time. Comparisons with September 11 crowd into the conversation, and indeed it is a sombre thing to be doing a production about America at war at this volatile and dangerous time.
DAY 4, October 12:
Today we improvise. Through a host of exercises we build up a sense of physical life in equatorial heat, the indolence born of waiting, military routine detached from military meaning, climaxing in everyone in the company finding their personal activity pattern through 24 hours on this airstrip hospital supply dump island - every hour, on the hour. The discoveries are very rewarding, and will become the basis of the GI and nurses, officers, and islanders groups. It is so exhilerating to see actors shed their inhibitions and be prepared to make fools of themselves - because arriving at that childlike, near-ridiculous state is how the imagination is set free. the company leave the rehearsal room with a tangibly different togetherness. Good week. We're ready to start staging.
DAY 5, October 15
We have been 1 person short during our first week. I hunted high and low for a totally authentic Bloody Mary, the Tonkinese woman who dreams of a better life for her daughter. My search took me to America and produced candidates from Java and the Maori South Pacific, but to no avail. Very late in the process, I heard a tape of a singer called Sheila Francisco from the Philippines and realised I was listening to the voice I had so far failed to find. The accompanying faxed photographs were so blurred that I had to wait an agonising few more days before discovering that she also looked like Michener's description in the original novel.
Sheila agreed to fly to London to meet us, did a triumphant audition and had the part less than 3 hours after she got off the plane. But then started the work permit merry-go-round. Nobody was in any doubt about her uniqueness and qualifications, nor that it would be entirely unacceptable to fail to meet the ethnic requirement of the part. But the red tape was mountainous, and as mysterious as Bali Ha'i.
Today then, Sheila returned from Manila, after 20 hours' travel, and walked straight into rehearsal. She was rapturously welcomed, but of course was the subject of close scrutiny. I urged her to go and sleep, but Sheila's instinct told her that there was a job to be done first. She jumped straight in, rehearsing Mary's first, cussed, formidable, wily, seductive scene with extraordinary courage and daring. When she finally succumbed to her jet lag a few hours later, everybody in the company knew we had a wonderful Bloody Mary. She turned to me as she left the room and said "OK, now I can sleep".
DAY 10, October 22
I found out today that the Donmar Warehouse are opening their revival of Privates on Parade in the same week as South Pacific, 2 days before us. Of course this news shouldn't matter at all, but it's not exactly good luck. I put on it's world premiere at the Aldwych when I was running the RSC and I was immensely proud of Michael Blakemore's production, which had such a brilliant cast. But it won't escape the notice of commentators that both shows concern the military in the far-flung southern hemisphere, both focus on a young white boy having a life-changing relationship with a native girl, and both end in a concert to entertain the troops during which all hell lets loose. I don't imagine anyone will have noticed the similarities before, but everybody will be tempted to stress them as staringly obvious when we open.
The irony is that South Pacific was originally scheduled at the RNT for next year, but as certain planning assumptions collapsed, it had to be brought forward 6 months. Sometimes your luck just turns to Sod's Law.
DAY 25, November 12
D-Day. D for decision. After seeing our Oklahoma! in 1998, the astute and out-spoken Jamie Hammerstein (son of Oscar) had said to me that if I was going to succeed with South Pacific to the same extent, I would have to make changes, especially in the last section, which he believed was unsatisfactory despite the fact that the original production enjoyed a world-wide triumph.
I began to research to the point where I was able to reconstruct an edition of the show which Rodgers & Hammerstein had wanted at the beginning of rehearsals in 1949, combined with some changes they and Joshua Logan made for the film version in 1958. This involved restoring Lt Cable's 'My Girl Back Home', a crucial song for de Becque and Cable called 'Now Is The Time', a considerable re-ordering of events, and the restoration of areas of dialogue considered to be too sensitive for the original Broadway audience at a time when racial segregation still existed in the US.
I had always understood that I had to ask permission to explore these variations from the published work, but not necessarily to include them finally in performance. That permission depended on the estate seeing and assessing the impact of the changes and making a judgment. Today is the day when representatives of the estate and the great composer's daughter, MaryRodgers, are here from America to see all the variant sections of our version, a full 2 weeks before the production moves into the theatre. By now the company are all passionately committed to our restored score and structure, so the sense of a thumbs-up or thumbs-down life-or-death call is very strong. The atmosphere is electric.
Mary is an artist. She is an accomplished composer in her own right, immensely knowledgeable about her father's work and intentions; but she believes in interpretation and the need for the drama of the past, however great, to respond to changing times and fresh influences. I confess that on many occasions during our crucial run-through of the changed scenes I slid furtive glances in her direction. When Philip Quast's de Becque and Edward Baker-Duly's Cable sang 'Now Is the Time', I saw her eyes fill with tears, realising that she was hearing the song in the show for the first time, and I could see that her most passionate creative instincts had become involved.
DAY 43, November 30
The stage revolve is too slow, the floor is very noisy, the gauze drags on the ground, the jeeps have very limited manoeuvrability, the flying pieces impede the palm trees, the back projection isn't registering.....it's called Tech Hell. Every big show goes through it. Famously in America, a director once said, "If Hitler is still alive, then I hope he is on the road opening a musical". Everything can be solved, but it's at moments like this when you understand why big shows in the West End are scheduled with 3 week's technical run-throughs, and not the 6 days we have because it's all we can afford. The temptation in this business is to believe that all you need to solve the problem is money, but the truth is, in almost every situation, what we really need is time.
FIRST PREVIEW
Wild cheers at the curtain call, we won't be deceived by that.....but there is light on the horizon.
(Thanks to Carol for typing and sending in this article)
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