Settling in with Settle

by
Brendan Lemon

When Keala Settle auditioned for the role of Bloody Mary, which she plays on the South Pacific tour, the director Bartlett Sher, who was impressed, asked, "Where were you when we were casting this production for Lincoln Center?"

So where was she? "I was at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego," Settle told me in a recent interview, "working as a stagehand with the sound crew for the musical 'A Catered Affair.'" And why was an actor this talented - Settle has a big, rich voice that can be swoony one minute, and rock out the next - working backstage?

"I'd done Tracy Turnblad for three years in a tour of 'Hairspray,'" Settle said, "and I was burnt out. But I love the backstage world of theater, so I decided to work in it while I figured things out."

Now that Settle's performing again, here's what she's figured out about her character, Bloody Mary: "She's not the happy-go-lucky lady from the movie who walks around and laughs. She's an actual person who's in survivor mode. The Second World War has upended her world. She'll do anything to get her daughter, Liat, a better life: that's why she's so desperate to hook her up with Cable. I'm so grateful to Bart Sher for giving me a character who isn't a cartoon."

Settle has played Bloody Mary twice before, the first time in college where she was on a theater scholarship. "I don't want to knock those productions too much, but in them Bloody Mary was a caricature."
Settle was involved in singing long before college. "My mother is a musician," says the actress, who grew up in Hawaii. "I was harmonizing with TV commercials from a very young age. I grew up with the Disney Channel and MTV." Settle says that in high school, "I was kind of a troublemaker. They put me into a Shakespeare class. I said, 'I can't understand this.' But I had a counselor who went through the plays with me, bit by bit. Before long, I was hooked on theater."

Settle likes playing Bloody Mary in a way that defies some people's expectations. For example, she says, "The song 'Happy Talk' is not really happy at all; it's uneasy and uncomfortable. I know there are some people who might not see it that way. But my take - and the take of this production - is richer, deeper, unafraid of the pain. After all, it takes place during wartime. A big war, that affected people's everyday lives in a way we can hardly imagine today."

When asked what she's enjoying most about doing South Pacific, Settle mentions the orchestra. "When I first heard it, and first was singing with it, I was in tears. I had never performed with a 25-piece orchestra before. The musicians in it are astounding, which makes my job more fun."

Settle also points to her fellow cast members as an advantage. "They're a great bunch.
A lot of them have never toured before. Unlike me: I've basically been living out of a suitcase for six years."

With her on-the-road experience, Settle is a resource person for the newbies, although she downplays this role. "I don't have to say much. I tell the actors that the best resource in any new town on the tour is the local stagehands. They always know the places to go eat and the local sites worth visiting. Myself, I've gotten to know a lot of towns on the road without having to ask the stagehands anymore. I know where the local Walgreen's is, and what bars are open in a given city after the show. To enjoy the road, you have to know the basics."

The End

On Tour Blog: David Pittsinger and Emile De Becque

by
Brendan Lemon

David Pittsinger, who is about to join the tour in Raleigh, North Carolina as Emile de Becque, has played the part 130 times during the production's ongoing run at Lincoln Center in New York. So the other day I asked him: does doing the show still surprise him?

"The surprise comes as a daily thing," replied Pittsinger, who graduated from U Conn and then got serious musical training at Yale. "There's always the excitement of each day's new audience, and the daily interaction with colleagues: trying to better our stage rapport."


More specifically, Pittsinger says, "I'm am still a little surprised by how consistently I am struck by the power of the show's scenes dealing with race." He points to the sequence when Lt. Joe Cable sings "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught" and then turns to Emile before the latter does "This Nearly Was Mine." "Sometimes," Pittsinger says, "I almost feel as if I'm looking at a younger version of myself." He adds, "I think everyone who portrays the characters of 'South Pacific finds things that we may not like in ourselves and may want to change. It isn't just a story of Nellie confronting her racism and everyone else being perfect."

I asked Pittsinger whether he was ever surprised by "South Pacific"'s ending: Nellie and Emile get back together to become a family. Will the honeymoon last? "That depends on who my Nellie is. Carmen Cusack" [who plays the part on the tour] will be the fifth performer I've played opposite in that role. Each one brings something strong to the part. Each Nellie would be a little different for Emile to settle down with. But whoever it is, I don't think that Nellie is going to flee back to Little Rock and or ever ask for a divorce. The love between Nellie and Emile is too strong."

Pittsinger usually inhabits the opera world (he just finished a run of "Tosca" at the Metropolitan Opera, playing Angelotti, and will do "Lulu" at the Met in the spring), so I asked him if playing Emile is much different from singing Mozart or Britten or any other great composer.

"In opera, you usually only have 6 or 8 performances in a run. It feels more like doing previews of a musical, where each performance can be totally unlike any other performance. With a long-running musical, you have much more time to explore a role. But make no mistake: Mozart's 'Magic Flute' was the music theater of its day: in that sense opera and Broadway are similar."

Pittsinger, who lives in Connecticut, with his wife, the singer Patricia Schuman, and their 10-year-old twins, is grateful to do "South Pacific" at this point in his rich and varied career. "I did 'Shenandoah' and 'Carnival' when I was young, and playing Emile has brought back a lot of feeling from that time - it conjures up the music I grew up with. I am very grateful for that."

END

More From Fleet Week at the Bay

by Genson Blimline

I really loved being out on the water on a beautiful ship. It's also nice to do things like this for huge audiences that are up close and personal. They really seemed to enjoy the number and that's always nice. If only we had a little more time before curtain, it would have been rad to go for a spin around the Bay.

On the Road blog: OPENING NIGHT SUCCESS

by Brendan Lemon

There's a certain song title from "South Pacific" that for 60 years has been used as a party theme to the point of cliché. But on Tuesday, September 22, in San Francisco, the cliché fit. Don't take my word for it: the theater critic of the San Francisco Chronicle used that familiar theme in the opening sentence of his review: "It's some enchanted evening, all right," wrote Robert Hurwitt.

Hurwitt and his critical colleagues launched the national tour of "South Pacific" with glowing notices, but I was more interested in what the cast members experienced that night at the Golden Gate Theatre, where the show is running through October 25, so I turned to a couple of the actors.

Both Mike Evariste, an ensemble member who also plays Henry, and Eric L. Christian, of the ensemble, are veterans of the road: Evariste has done "Rent," "Smokey Joe's Café," and "FAME," and Christian has toured with "Aida," "Chicago," and "Carousel." But they both seemed to think that the "South Pacific" opening night was special.

"The audience was really responsive," said Evariste. "We got reports backstage that some members were so affected they were crying and that others were humming and singing the songs in the lobby at intermission."

For more rehearsal photos, click here.

Christian concurs. "We got a standing ovation on opening night, and on the night after. That was a big relief for the cast, not because we were worried that we weren't good, but because we'd all been working so hard to become a team and we hoped that our effort would come across."

Evariste, who was a member from the beginning of the this production's first go-round at Lincoln Center Theater in New York, added, "During previews at Lincoln Center we were kind of nervous. The show hadn't been on Broadway for 60 years, so we all felt this obligation to make it as good as possible. The pressure on the tour cast leading up to San Francisco was a little different: everyone knew that the show had won seven Tonys in New York, and people wanted to live up to that reputation."

Audiences and reviewers agreed that they had. But what about the opening-night party - the reward for all the cast and creative team's toil? Well, it was held at the Great American Music Hall, on O'Farrell Street, which has been around since 1907.

"There was a backdrop there in the spirit of the show," said Christian, who is coming off a long stint with "South Pacific" in New York. "It's such a great atmosphere: food, drink, a d.j. Bart [Sher, the director of the production] gave a speech, and said how proud he was of us." Evariste added: "Bart's speech was inspiring. He wished us luck on the road, and said he was confident that we would spread the story of 'South Pacific' all over the country."

Other important figures in this staging of the Rodgers & Hammerstein show were also in attendance on opening night: Bob Boyett, the producer; Bernard Gersten, the executive producer of Lincoln Center Theater, or as he calls it, "the mother country"; and Ted Chapin, president and executive director of The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization.

"I didn't see anyone at the party," Evariste said, "who didn't seem to be having a good time."

END

On the Road blog: Opening Night Success

by Brendan Lemon

There's a certain song title from "South Pacific" that for 60 years has been used as a party theme to the point of cliché. But on Tuesday, September 22, in San Francisco, the cliché fit. Don't take my word for it: the theater critic of the San Francisco Chronicle used that familiar theme in the opening sentence of his review: "It's some enchanted evening, all right," wrote Robert Hurwitt.

Hurwitt and his critical colleagues launched the national tour of "South Pacific" with glowing notices, but I was more interested in what the cast members experienced that night at the Golden Gate Theatre, where the show is running through October 25, so I turned to a couple of the actors.

Both Mike Evariste, an ensemble member who also plays Henry, and Eric L. Christian, of the ensemble, are veterans of the road: Evariste has done "Rent," "Smokey Joe's Café," and "FAME," and Christian has toured with "Aida," "Chicago," and "Carousel." But they both seemed to think that the "South Pacific" opening night was special.

"The audience was really responsive," said Evariste. "We got reports backstage that some members were so affected they were crying and that others were humming and singing the songs in the lobby at intermission."

Christian concurs. "We got a standing ovation on opening night, and on the night after. That was a big relief for the cast, not because we were worried that we weren't good, but because we'd all been working so hard to become a team and we hoped that our effort would come across."

Evariste, who was a member from the beginning of the this production's first go-round at Lincoln Center Theater in New York, added, "During previews at Lincoln Center we were kind of nervous. The show hadn't been on Broadway for 60 years, so we all felt this obligation to make it as good as possible. The pressure on the tour cast leading up to San Francisco was a little different: everyone knew that the show had won seven Tonys in New York, and people wanted to live up to that reputation."

Audiences and reviewers agreed that they had. But what about the opening-night party - the reward for all the cast and creative team's toil? Well, it was held at the Great American Music Hall, on O'Farrell Street, which has been around since 1907.

"There was a backdrop there in the spirit of the show," said Christian, who is coming off a long stint with "South Pacific" in New York. "It's such a great atmosphere: food, drink, a d.j. Bart [Sher, the director of the production] gave a speech, and said how proud he was of us." Evariste added: "Bart's speech was inspiring. He wished us luck on the road, and said he was confident that we would spread the story of 'South Pacific' all over the country."

Other important figures in this staging of the Rodgers & Hammerstein show were also in attendance on opening night: Bob Boyett, the producer; Bernard Gersten, the executive producer of Lincoln Center Theater, or as he calls it, "the mother country"; and Ted Chapin, president and executive director of The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization.

"I didn't see anyone at the party," Evariste said, "who didn't seem to be having a good time."

END

South Pacific at the San Francisco Bay

Last Thursday, the men of SOUTH PACIFIC hit the high seas! Or, more accurately, the calm waters of the San Francisco Bay, while safely docked the entire time at Pier 3 on the Embarcadero. Whether or not we ever actually left port, we definitely had a great time aboard the California Hornblower, in support of the upcoming Fleet Week in San Francisco. It was a ton of fun to perform NOTHIN' LIKE A DAME for the folks aboard this craft, and feeling the stage floor rock beneath my feet during our performance was a new experience for me that really brought some verisimilitude to the whole evening! Check out some photos from the event!

BACKSTAGE BLOG: Catching Up With Carmen Cusack

by Brendan
Lemon

Brendan Lemon: Before doing Nellie Forbush in this tour of South Pacific, had you ever appeared in a Rodgers and Hammerstein show before?

Carmen Cusack: No, I have never appeared in a Rodgers and Hammerstein show before. Although I have known and loved their music since I was little.

BL: Where did you grow up and when did
you start performing?

CC: I grew up mainly in Houston, Texas.
I started singing solos for church at age 5.

BL: Where did you study music and
acting?

CC: I started learning music and acting
in high school and competed in both. I then went on to major in opera at University of North Texas.

BL: What was your first professional
role?

CC: My first role was the prostitute
part -- she had a name but I can't remember it -- in "Can-Can" at Casa Mañana theatre in Fort Worth, Texas.

BL: Have you toured with a show before?
How do you stay healthy on the road?

CC: Yes, I have toured many a show but
I would say my most challenging role on tour would be Elphaba in "Wicked." At the sign of a tickle in the throat I took zinc and vitamin C, ate lots of healthy food, drank lots of water, steamed, and tried to rest as much as possible.

BL: What was the first time you saw
South Pacific onstage?

CC: I first saw South Pacific at the National Theatre in London. It was directed by Trevor Nunn. I remember thinking that the part of Nellie looked a ton of fun!

BL: How does this production of "South
Pacific" compare with the other versions of the show you've seen?

CC: My most recent viewing of "South
Pacific" was at Lincoln Center in NYC. It floored me. It was so different from my previous experience. Director Bartlett Sher really brought out the interesting shades of the piece and gave the story so much more depth.

BL: Can you compare Nellie to any of
the other major roles you've done?

CC: I cannot compare Nellie to anything
else I have done so far. It is not at all like any other part I have played. I am still pinching myself that I get to play her!

BL: How do you keep Nellie from being
too much of a knucklehead?

CC: Well, I don't really see Nellie as
a "knucklehead" at all. I see her as fun, warm, and spiky at times.
She is a product of her environment but she is not dim. She is forced to face her prejudices and becomes enlightened by love.

For more photos go to our South Pacific on tour Facebook Page.

END

Backstage Blog: THE BALLAD OF JOE CABLE

by Brendan Lemon

You might not think it to look at him, but Anderson Davis, who plays Lt. Joe Cable, was an oboist in high school. It isn't that I think oboists come in a particular size and shape, it's just that when you hear Davis sing you can't believe that this native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana wasn't always performing on the stage, not in the pit below it.

"My first exposure to musicals, really, was playing in the high school orchestra"

Davis said recently over coffee at a Starbuck's near South Pacific's New York rehearsal room. "It took a lot of air to play the oboe, and a lot of focus. You can get a little light in the head."

So why did he transition to the stage? (His first musical as a performer was "Anything Goes.") "I wanted to do something more physically active," he says - a remark that made perfect sense to me after I spent five minutes in Davis's company. You could power a small city with his stay-up-all-night-and-still-do-two-shows-the-next-day energy.

Since graduating from Carnegie-Mellon's theater program three years ago, that energy has been steadily harnessed. Davis has done the classics ("Les Miz," "Damn Yankees," "Forum") and some lesser-known stuff ("Homemade Fusion"). He appreciates the opportunities provided by musicals, as well as the pay, but he would like to do a straight drama at some point. "And my biggest dream as an actor," he adds, "is to do something new."

If that something new happened to be by Adam Guettel, I suspect that Davis's enthusiasm would be so boundless he might need a whole bottle of Valium to restore his equilibrium. "Adam Guettel keeps my hope alive for the musical theater - makes me feel that it has a future," Davis comments. Referring to a 1998 Guettel song cycle, Davis adds, "I directed a production of 'Myths and Hymns' at Carnegie-Mellon, which I enjoyed a lot."

For more rehearsal photos, click here.

Davis is aware, of course, of the connection between Guettel and South Pacific director Bartlett Sher (Sher directed Guettel's "The Light in the Piazza"), but the actor speaks of his director in more general terms. "Bart is so good at telling a story," Davis says. "That's not always the main priority with musicals. I'm grateful to be a part of that."

Doing eight shows a week may satisfy Davis's interpretive side, but it doesn't quite harness his creative mojo. "I have a little recording studio in my apartment," he says, "and I'm always playing around there." And who are his songwriting inspirations?

"Jeff Buckley, for sure," Davis says. "And Bjork: going to one of her concerts is as close as I've been to heaven on earth."

I cannot terminate this blog entry without mentioning New Orleans. Davis's two brothers live there, having been washed out by Katrina and moving back.

"They have this big instrument they've put together called the Drum Cart,"

Davis says. "It basically consists of two drum kits fused together into a kind of mini float. They play it at special occasions and at big parades. My usual job is to pull it along." Davis says that during the "SP" tour's week off after its first engagement in San Francisco, he plans to go to New Orleans for its annual Halloween celebration.

"The Drum Cart will be out in full force. The general theme for our costuming will be something along the Medical experiment/genetic manipulation line."

"Young Frankenstein"? I ask. "Sounds like it," Davis replies.

For more photos from the rehearsal, follow the link to the South Pacific on Tour Facebook page.

END

Backstage Blog: PLAYING EMILE

by Brendan Lemon

Rod Gilfry, who is playing Emile de Becque, grew up in a musical household. He has sung Curly in “Oklahoma” and Billy Bigelow in “Carousel” (twice). He sings “Some Enchanted Evening” in his cabaret-style, one-man show. But Gilfry had never seen a production of South Pacific until he signed on for the tour.

“It’s true,” Gilfry said recently after an afternoon rehearsal in New York. “I only saw it after I got this job. I went to see the show at Lincoln Center Theater, and I was really stunned by it – the beautiful designs, the singing, how real [director] Bart Sher kept everything. I’m deeply affected by greatness, and I was deeply affected that night.”

Gilfry, who grew up in southern California and who still has his home base there, in Rancho Cucamonga, feels that his combination of qualities suits him well for Emile. “I’m the right age,” says Gilfry. (Emile is 44; the performer is a young-looking 50.) “And I speak French. For six years, I had a teacher who was French, so English spoken with a French accent is pretty natural for me.”

Gilfry has sung those Rodgers & Hammerstein roles, and he met his wife while they were doing a musical in high school, but his career has been identified primarily with classical musical and opera. “I didn’t want to be an opera singer at first,” he says. “I wanted to be a soloist in works by Bach and Handel and Beethoven. Then I decided that to be really successful I needed to do well in opera.”

Gilfry had three small roles during the Los Angeles Opera’s inaugural season, in 1986, then spent several years based in Europe, singing standard baritone roles like Don Giovanni. He has originated new work at home and abroad: as Stanley in Andre Previn’s opera “A Streetcar Named Desire,” for example.

“I enjoy singing in Europe,” Gilfry says. (He’ll be taking a break in the middle of the South Pacific tour to do “The Sound of Music” in Paris; his daughter Carin, who just finished her master’s at Juilliard, will sing Liesl.) “But I’m excited about being able to tour with an American musical in the United States.
I’ve never done that before.”

Asked about the differences between singing a musical-theatre role and an operatic role, Gilfry comments, “The vocal demands are less in musical theater. I recently sang the title role in an opera in Amsterdam that was five-and-a-half hours long.” (It was Messiaen’s “Saint Francois d’Assise.”)

He continues: “In opera, there is less flexibility allowed for interpreting what the composer has written. With Verdi, for example, it all right there in the score. You have a lot more latitude in musical theatre, and I enjoy that.”

Gilfry, though, is quick to point out that musical theatre has its own challenges. “Going from dialogue to singing can be tricky. You have to make sure the transitions are logical. It helps a lot when the composer and lyricist were aware of that when they created the piece. That’s certainly the case with South Pacific.

END

Backstage Blog: GETTING STARTED

By Brendan Lemon

The excitement was palpable this week in a midtown-Manhattan rehearsal room as the cast and creatives of the South Pacific tour gathered en masse for the first time. Looking around the room, which included not only the folks going on the road but the entire South Pacific community, Bartlett Sher, the production's director, said, "It's amazing to see how many people are here."

Before Sher took the floor, other individuals essential to the enterprise also spoke. Bob Boyett, the enterprise's producer, welcomed everyone and spoke about how "brilliantly" this revival had been received when it opened on Broadway in April 2008. The executive producer of that staging, Bernard Gersten of Lincoln Center Theater, extended greetings "on behalf of the mother country." Ted Chapin, the President and Executive Director of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, introduced Mary Rodgers Guettel, the daughter of South Pacific composer, Richard Rodgers, and Alice Hammerstein, the daughter of the show's lyricist and co-book writer, Oscar Hammerstein II.

Other connections to history were invoked by people in the room. Sher stressed how South Pacific is "written out of a real story." He made a connection to the social climate when the production premiered in 2008 on Broadway, when the country, he said, was fighting two wars and George W. Bush was president, and compared it to 2009, with a new president. The political climate, Sher said, was now "a completely different thing." (A nonpartisan historian might point out that those two wars are still going on.)

What is not different from last year's Broadway production and the tour's sure-to-be-glorious version of it is the amount of talent involved. Genson Blimline, who is the tour's Stewpot, was also in the Lincoln Center production. (Other Lincoln Center vets going on tour are Mike Evariste and Eric L. Christian.) Blimline, who recently got engaged to South Pacific tour performer Jacqueline Colmer, looked around this week's rehearsal room and told me, "I really glad we're going to be able to share the South Pacific experience with the rest of the country - not just San Francisco and L.A. but places like Fayetteville and Lincoln, Nebraska."

END

For more pictures from our First Day of Rehearsal go to our Facebook fan page or our Friends of NETworks website.

THE DANCE MAN

By Brendan Lemon

That Christopher Gattelli's credit in the playbill says "Musical Staging" instead of "Choreography" has something to do with South Pacific's history: in the 1949 Broadway production, director Joshua Logan, with help from the cast, did the movement himself, without the assistance of a professional choreographer. But Gattelli's credit also has to do with the philosophy behind South Pacific in its 2008 Broadway revival and for that production’s 2009-2010 national tour.

"Bart Sher” – the revival’s director – “said from the beginning that he wanted to treat the show as a play," Gattelli told me during a rehearsal break last year. "And in order to achieve that philosophy the dancing has to be based in reality: everything has to be look as natural -- as 'un-choreographed' -- as possible."

Even with this outlook, however, Gattelli and Sher tend to bump up the level of the movement when the onstage talent allows. "We don’t cast the show specifically for dance background," Gattelli says, “but we use the talents that exist among the actors."

When it comes to two of the best-known big numbers in the first act, "Bloody Mary" and "There Is Nothin' Like a Dame," Gattelli aims for authenticity. "Back in the 1940s, people didn't have as many distractions as we do now -- no television or videogames. Consequently, more of them learned how to dance. Which means that the idea of the men in these numbers – the Seabees -- dancing pretty well makes historical sense. At the same time, these men are in the construction trades. They have to move like guys, not like slick, polished Fred Astaires."

Gattelli, whose upcoming projects include choreographing an Oct. 26 benefit concert for The Actors Fund (the event’s chairs are Jo Sullivan Loesser and Sir Paul McCartney) observes that the Seabees' first-act numbers are part of the reason that South Pacific appeals to male audiences as much as to female audiences. He adds: "That group also includes Guys and Dolls and West Side Story. And not many more."

THE “SOUTH PACIFIC” HISTORIAN

By Brendan Lemon

When students of the American musical discuss why it took nearly 60 years to revive South Pacific on Broadway and then launch it on its new national tour they frequently cite the difficulty of finding the right person to play Emile de Becque. Laurence Maslon, the author of a beautiful, highly enjoyable recent book called The South Pacific Companion, is fully aware of the casting issues but in an interview the other day immediately zeroed in on something else: timing.

"One of the problems with bringing back South Pacific in a major way," Maslon remarked, "has been the question: what's the right cultural climate in which to revive the show? Sadly, we are in two wars now, Iraq and Afghanistan, which provide an apt backdrop for Bart Sher’s production, even though the circumstances of Iraq and Afghanistan are very different from those of World War II."

To the theatergoers of 1949, when South Pacific debuted on Broadway, many of the documentary photographs in Maslon's book--Times Square on V-E Day; Marines going ashore on the Solomon Islands--would have been highly familiar, as would the life-and-death stakes in the show's story.

"In those initial audiences," Maslon said, "everybody would have known someone who had fought in the war. Of those people, probably one-half would have known somebody who had fought in the South Pacific and probably one-third would have known someone who died in the South Pacific. Those audiences' feelings were still fresh. That's very different from now, when probably very few theatergoers know somebody who's died in Iraq."

Such historical compare-and-contrast has played a large role in the work of Maslon, who is an associate arts professor at NYU and the author, with Michael Kantor, of Broadway: The American Musical. "The first show I saw, at the age of 9," Maslon said, "was 1776. Whether I was aware of it at the time or not, I was forever impressed with how someone could take something real--in this case, the Declaration of Independence-- and turn it into something musical."

If some aspects of the historical context of South Pacific were perhaps the main revelations for Maslon in the writing of his volume, the process by which Oscar Hammerstein II and Josh Logan wrote the musical's book was also eye-opening. Maslon said: "People tend to think, Oh, those men took two stories from James Michener's Tales of the South Pacific and turned them into a musical. But when you dig deeper you discover that they used something from every one of Michener's stories. The level at which Hammerstein combed through Michener's book is amazing. It's one of the most thorough jobs of adaptation for a musical that I've ever encountered."