By Dale King
Lake Worth Playhouse wraps up its much too-short, three-week run of the musical South Pacific with a matinee today. It’s the final time, at least for now, that the powerful baritone voice of lead actor Michael Cartwright will resound so beautifully across the lushly decorated seashore stage with touching Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II tunes like “Some Enchanted Evening” and “This Nearly Was Mine.”
It will be the final time Meri Ziev excellently portrays Bloody Mary, the island merchant who boasts of being rich because she has earned $2,000 selling grass skirts and shrunken heads.
It will be the last time Steven Youngstein becomes the joke-a-minute seaman Luther Billis, who can pretty much get you anything you want — for a price — from a shower to a boat ride to the mysterious island called Bali Ha’i.
The Lake Avenue venue that hosted silent films in the 1920s morphs into a South Pacific World War II island for this show, which should probably continue several more weeks. The isle hosts a contingent of 10,000 Navy seamen and nurses on guard for attacks by Japanese ships and planes using the narrow strait.
In this mystical spot, love comes to Navy nurse Nellie Forbush (Jamie Cleary) and Emile (Cartwright), a French ex-patriot who admittedly sought shelter on the island years earlier after killing a man. Though it was apparently an accident, he stills bears the guilt and shame. Still, he has carved out a plantation for himself and his two children born to him and his late Polynesian wife.
Another love story blooms, that between Lt. Joe Cable (Christopher Burdick), the Princeton-educated Naval officer, and Liat (Mayumi Combs), Bloody Mary’s daughter, a denizen of Bali Ha’i who is as mysterious as her island home.
Both couples endure troubling tumult that threatens the very being of their relationships. The war also intervenes, endangering the lives of Emile and Lt. Cable. And the issue of racism – a major element of this 1949 production – rears its ugly head.
The music is really what floats this endearing story. Nearly every song has become a classic, and there are others perhaps not as well-known but worthy, such as the particularly cute “Dites-Moi,” featuring Emile’s mixed-race children, portrayed by Ross Porter Skillern and Karley Nau.
In their roles, Cleary and Cartwright are particularly strong in the acting and vocal department. He is particularly adept at tackling various roles. He played King Arthur in the Monty Python spoof, Spamalot, and was the tough Professor Callahan in last summer’s Legally Blonde, the Musical.
Ziev, who joined the cast late, is excellent in her role as Bloody Mary. She wants desperately to marry off her daughter, but in the business world, her heart is a bit colder. She casts off non-buyers as “stingy bastards.”
Burdick does a fine job as Lt. Cable, pondering the roots of his character’s prejudice. As Liat, Combs looks supremely delicate and dances with flowerlike grace.
Youngstein’s character of Billis is fantastic and funny. He takes a cue from Radar in M*A*S*H and makes it his own. A bevy of ensemble characters rounds out a stunning production directed by Nikki Lee. With the theater filled to capacity, the audience gave this production a standing ovation.
South Pacific closes with a 2 p.m. matinee today at the Lake Worth Playhouse, 713 Lake Ave., Lake Worth. Call 561-586-6410 for tickets and information.