‘South Pacific’ explores prejudice and romance, highlights new talent

WASILLA — At Valley Performing Arts, “South Pacific” is as much about the relationships between the characters as the relationships between the actors and actresses themselves.

In VPA’s production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic musical comedy, romantic relationships develop between French planters and Army nurses, as well as between a Marine lieutenant and a local girl on the Solomon Islands during World War II.

The story, according to Director Larry Bottjen, explores both the love and prejudice surrounding those relationships.

“Prejudice raises its head because (Liat) is a native girl, and the lieutenant (Joseph Cable) loves her,” Bottjen said. “But he recognizes that he’ll never be able to bring her back and have her be accepted into the culture of the U.S.”

Hyrum Neilson, new to the VPA stage, plays Lt. Cable. The art, health and P.E. teacher from Fronteras Spanish Immersion Charter School said he views his character as “very cocky” at first, but that changes over time.

“He comes out thinking that he’s gonna change the world,” Neilson said, of Cable. “His intention is to come and change the tide of the war in that area, and in the process, when things don’t go the way he expects, he pretty much says ‘well, the heck with all of this.’ And that’s when he falls in love with an island girl, which is totally against everything thing that he’s ever been taught.”

And so, the age-old inner battle between following one’s heart and following tradition plays out in Neilson’s performance of Cable’s story.

Two of Neilson’s four children, Graci Lynn and Tyler Maxwell, are also in the show, as the multiracial children of French planter Emile de Becque.

De Becque, played by first-time VPA actor Edwin Ford, falls in love with nurse Nellie Forbush — played by first-time actress Tanya Hegg — early in the show. The feeling is mutual, until Forbush meets de Becque’s children and realizes he was once married to a Polynesian woman.

“She’s madly in love and head over heels, but from her upbringing in Arkansas, she brought some prejudice over to the south Pacific,” Hegg said, of Forbush. “When she’s confronted with his two mixed-race children, she absolutely is floored and doesn’t know how to function, cannot wrap her mind around it.”

Patsy Tuisaula, who plays “Bloody Mary,” the mother of Liat, said she thinks the nurse’s prejudice is more about virginity than race, though the show tends to present racism as a more significant issue of the time.

“I think it’s not only the fact that he was married to a Polynesian woman, but I think it was because he was just with another woman,” Tuisaula said.

Tuisaula backed her opinion with her own history. When she was young, her Polynesian grandmother told her not to marry a man with children, and not to marry a black man.

At the time, she didn’t understand. That changed when she made the cut for South Pacific.

“I realized doing this play that it’s because they felt that their Polynesian daughters would go farther with a light-colored-skin person than a dark-colored-skin person like themselves,” she said.

Even so, the issue was not just skin color — it was money, Tuisaula said.

As Bloody Mary, Tuisaula takes on the part of a hustler, she said, always trying “to get the best deal for the buck.”

All with good intentions, of course.

“She’s a mother who just wants the best for her daughter, and does all that she can to make that happen,” Tuisaula said, of Bloody Mary.

Tuisaula has five children of her own in real life, all of whom encouraged her to audition for South Pacific, one of just three or four musicals in which she has ever performed.

Hegg, too, has children at home, as well as a full-time marketing job in Anchorage. She also teaches voice lessons out of her home on weekends.

Hegg, Tuisaula, Neilson and Bottjen each made it clear that the time commitment for producing such a big, well-known show as South Pacific can put a strain on a family.

But they also made it clear that none would trade the experience for anything.

“My children, who were really proud of me when I got the role, are watching me follow through with the commitment, no matter how difficult it is,” Hegg said. “The show must go on.”

Neilson had a similar perspective, but was also able to appreciate being in a play with his kids.

“It’s been really awesome for them to branch out and kind of set their wings in flight,” he said. “As a father it’s been really cool to see them … get out of their shell.”

But the camaraderie of the cast, he said — and Bottjen agreed — is another thing that makes the play special.

“It’s the relationships that you form, for me, that are the most important things,” Bottjen said. “Those far outlast the temporary benefits of getting the bows.”

He said the show also features special music, dance numbers and light effects in the Boar’s Tooth Ceremonial scene, a part not included in the Broadway musical.

“It will be totally unique to anything VPA has seen before,” he said.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.

What: Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific”

Where: Valley Performing Arts, 251 W. Swanson Ave., Wasilla

When: Weekends, March 20 through April 19

Tickets: Purchase online at valleyperformingarts.org, or 373-0195.