This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Okay, so what's funny is when I've told people that we'll be covering South Pacific, I would say that the general response that I get from them is likened unto a child who's been told that they need to go visit their great-grandma's house. Oh, that's hilarious. Do you know what I mean? I actually do. That feeling of, oh, but it smells weird and she has really strange rules. Like, do we have to? My great-grandma, she lived through the depression and everything and had very strict rules about toilet paper to the point where she would unroll the entire roll of toilet paper and take a marker and mark every three squares so that you knew you could only rip off three squares at a time. That does not sound fun.

And if she went in and there had been, you know, a breach of trust in the toilet paper, there were problems. I also remember in the basement, there were these really old bottles of ketchup in her food storage that had turned black. They were no longer red. And I'm pretty sure my aunt and uncle or something were like, hey, Grandma, maybe it's time to throw out these ketchup bottles. And I wonder if that's how a lot of people feel about South Pacific. Is it a black ketchup bottle at this point that we should just throw away and not have anymore? So it's funny that you would say that it's like a visit to your great-grandmothers, because that's a little bit what my response to it was when I got asked to do it.

I mean, just sort of way underneath. Sure. After all the gratitude. Of course. Of course. Hashtag blessed. But then, oh, God. And so I actually figured it out. And I talked to my cast about it on the first day because what I figured out was that I had seen productions of it. And first of all, I have to establish that I may be on the side of being a slightly more immature theater goer just in general. I find myself getting bored easily. So how I direct is based off of that tendency to get bored. In addition to that, here's what I figured out. I realized that it was a play. Yeah. And when I realized that it was a play, my whole approach and thought about it changed because in my opinion, it may be one of the most beautiful scores ever written.

No doubt. But the songs are an extension of the scenes, an extension of the characters. They are not big spectacle numbers. They are not, you know, showbiz. Yeah, it's not that at all. And each song comes out of a moment, usually of intimacy. So when I started thinking of it like that, it still holds as like something that is one of my most favorite directing experiences ever. I know. That's so cool. So it completely flipped. Well, I'm excited to talk about it. So let's get to it. Yay. Welcome, everybody, to a musical theater podcast where we discuss the cultural and emotional impact of some of our favorite musicals in theater history. My name is Jeffrey Scott Parsons. You can call me Jeff. Today, we're talking South Pacific.

And my guest is Kirsten Chandler, who is a woman, friend, mother, director, actor, dog owner. What am I missing? Foodie. Baker. Baker. What's your go-to? Because, you know, my culture, you say I love you by making cookies. I mean, that's just how it is. Well, you know, I understand that. And I think that I delve into many baked goods. I would say that, you know, my latest experiment would be with breads, which is I know I've I'm actually like I'm looking into yeast. It's like the more complicated thing to do, but I'm taking it on. That's exciting. But yeah, you know, cookies are that's a thing for me. Yeah. Around the holidays. Nice. I'm impressed by the bread. Thank you. And like, do you have a bread maker?

No. Yes, I have a bread maker. It's my oven. Yeah. I mean, I should try the whole instant pot thing because that's like interesting that people throw a bunch of things in the pot and then it turns into bread. Yeah. And I haven't tried that yet. I'm kind of at the point where I have so many I have too many gadgets in the kitchen. I have two waffle makers, one that's a Belgian waffle maker, one that's a heart shaped waffle maker just for Valentine's Day. You know, like it's reached a point where there's too much. There's too much. Well, you know what? You can use them all if you have lots of people over. Fair enough. Because one takes a long time. Good point. So you can just, you know, like smack them all down and waffle bar at Jeff's house.

What are we talking about? South Pacific. Have you ever played Nellie Forbush? Because I feel like that would have been a thing for you, right? That's nice of you to say. No, I never did. And when I was a performer, I was also a somewhat less mature human being. Yeah. Well, you know, but some of us had more like, you know, the things that interested me were just very I had blinders on. So I think Nellie Forbush fell outside of what I considered interesting, which, you know, what a what a mistake, especially now I look back on so many of those classic characters and go, why didn't I do that? Why wasn't I interested in that? But I also think we've come around to recognizing there's more to these.

Absolutely. These chestnuts, these warhorses. Besides, there's nothing like a dame. Correct. You know, because for the longest time, that's what I thought South Pacific was. It was just a bunch of sailors talking about women. Yes. And then and then you go and see it and you're like, wait, the first 20 minutes is two people. And then all of a sudden your expectations are not met. The approach is like it's stick almost. And it's a huge mistake. There's some real stuff going on. You know, one of the most interesting things is at the end of the show, when they're shipping out at the end of this whole long show where really they're just waiting on this island to be told the next step as Marines were.

Yeah. And in the original, I believe there's a reprise of Honey Bun. And it's very sort of like jaunty and fun. Well, when when I directed it, we reexamined that moment because this is the moment they ship out. Here's an interesting thing. When we got our our costume plot, the Marines uniforms for when they ship out were like one of them had a starfish on it and a netting and haha, you know, it's like, yeah, yeah. But you can see how the approach was that this wasn't a dire, very sobering moment for these men about to ship out. So we changed the music to just be very sort of stark and military in that moment so that you looked at this song that was really funny earlier in the act. And it turns very solemn.

The Lincoln Center version did this something very similar. And I looked at it and went, oh, my God, they did. They looked at that, too, and said, this isn't the right feeling for this moment. So it's interesting, you know, the I think that some companies in the past maybe especially have approached it more, I guess, you know, musical comedy, you know, rather than real stuff going on and like a play where don't you think we were kind of guilty of doing that with most Rogers and Hammerstein? And this is the first Rogers and Hammerstein, the first R&H musical that we're covering on the podcast. Oh, cool, which is fun. I'm honored. We're not going to be part of it. We're not going to do the deep dive into their history, because we'll probably save that for Oklahoma.

Got it. But good, because I won't mess up something wrong. But it's true. We kind of do this to all of their shows where it's oh, it's fluff. It's R&H, you know, right. And by the time they come together as a composing team, they've been in this business a long time. Richard Rogers with Lorenz Hart, and Oscar Hammerstein, the second with Jerome Kern, and you know, countless others. They're at the point where they're not needing to prove anything to anyone, right? In fact, they want to take over musical theater and reign as giants of Broadway. And they do as well they should as well. But there's nothing accidental about what they create. Yeah. And somehow, we think of it as fluffy. That was not the intention behind these artists.

Correct. And, you know, especially South Pacific's themes dealt with racism at a time when that wasn't known. I don't know if anyone had ever put it into a musical. It's something that he was really interested in for most of his career. When you think about working with Jerome Kern and Chobot. Yes, there. He's always kind of looking at racism, specifically the racism coming out of World War Two was very interesting to him. So, you know, rewinding, we're going to history. World War Two ends in like 1945. And out of it, a book is written called Stories of the South Pacific, Tales of Tales. Thank you. Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener. And it's a collection of 19 short stories. There's no actual through line through the entire book.

They're just all of these short stories, right? Talking about his experiences as someone serving in the military. Correct. And it wins the Pulitzer Prize. Hollywood passes on it, but it comes across the eyes of Joshua Logan, who is a director, famous director, had worked with Rodgers and Hammerstein on Allegro, which was the musical right before this. So Rodgers and Hammerstein had had a huge hit with Oklahoma, a huge hit with Carousel. Then they write Allegro, which is a huge flop. But they really enjoyed working on it with Josh Logan. So he shows R.N.H. this book and says, I think that we should, you know, do something with this. They immediately go to James Michener and are like, can we have this to use?

And Michener says, absolutely. Hollywood didn't want it. And he wasn't even an author. He had won a Pulitzer Prize, but he wasn't even a full time author at that point. He was still an editor working at Macmillan Publishing. Crazy. Wow. So like no showbiz sense whatsoever with this guy. He agrees to let them musicalize it in exchange for, I think, one percent of box office receipts. That is correct. What I think is fascinating about Oscar Hammerstein's connection with this material and specifically the racism and prejudice found within it is that his wife, Dorothy, had a sister who was married to a Japanese American and he worked in New York and was interned in Ellis Island during World War Two.

Crazy. That is crazy. The sister-in-law and the daughter move in with the Hammersteins because her husband is interned at Ellis Island. They take the daughter to a school who is, you know, half Japanese. And the mother asks the principal, I want to make sure that my daughter will be safe here because there is obviously a lot of prejudice going on. And the school says she's going to have to pay for her antecedents. That was literally the quote. So then they put her, they take her out of that school immediately and put her into like a Quaker school because at least she'll be safe there. So this is all happening in Oscar Hammerstein's house. And so it's like fresh in his mind and it's present in the James Mishner stories.

And he didn't shy away from it. In fact, there were people who in out-of-town tryouts tried to get him to remove songs like You've Got to Be Carefully Taught. And he said, well, that's, that's our play. This is the whole point of what I wrote. And so, no. Which is great. It was stuck to his guns. They didn't think it was going to be commercial or that it wouldn't play. It seems like everybody was really allergic to feeling preached to, which is silly because then you've also got like the Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur and kind of all of these pieces of entertainment that actually feel very preachy to me. Somebody actually, I think one of the reviewers wrote it felt patronizing or something like that.

Like you're being talked down to. I'm like, really? But somehow people were ready for it because it was a huge hit and it was reviewed beautifully and it won the Pulitzer for play. So, yeah. Do you know that he, Oscar Hammerstein, ended up opening the first adoption agency for international children and biracial children? I did not know that. It was called like Welcome Home or something like that. Wow. That's super cool. I mean, I'm not saying he was a perfect man, but he had a pretty high set of ideals that he was putting into practice in both his work and his life. And I got to hand it to him. That's pretty amazing. It is. It's pretty cool. So, they start musicalizing it. What is funny is that Oscar Hammerstein was really into the whole relationship between Nellie Forbush and Emile Debeck.

So, you have Nellie Forbush, who's this cockeyed optimist, southern gal from America, and Emile Debeck, who is a Frenchman living on this island in the South Pacific. And they meet and have this relationship and Oscar Hammerstein loved writing that one. But he very upfront said that he has no idea what it's like to serve in the military and had no idea how to write about that. That's how he came to, I mean, Joshua Logan was the one who brought that knowledge to the table. Because he had served as well as had written, what was it, Journey's End? Is that the play? Yes, I think. It was like the year before he directed and helped write this play that was also about the military. And so it was a perfect fit. However, R&H being, you know, once again,

[14:19] Kirsten Chandler: Tines and Giants of Broadway. They were not going to let Joshua Logan have credit for writing it because no one was going to break up the team of Rodgers and Hammerstein. And it wasn't until much later that they allowed the book to be billed as having been written by Joshua Logan and Oscar Hammerstein, but he didn't get any money for it. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, he only got it in billing. Wow, those guys were... But then he directed the movie, didn't he? Did he direct the movie? Now I'm going to look that up. Okay, look it up. Maybe you've got something for that. Do you like the movie? No. Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, you know, there's things to appreciate about all things, even not so great things, but it's clunky.

It's super clunky. It's got a lot of interesting color. Yeah, you're right. Josh Logan directed the movie. Boom. Yeah, some of the color changes. It's like random. Suddenly it'll be it's like it was shot with a different camera. Yeah, I mean, it completely odd. At the beginning of Wonderful Guy when Mitzi Gaynor's just like staring down the lens and just singing straight to camera. You're like, what is happening? She looking into my soul? I kind of love those things. Like you can look back at some movies that experimented with things that either became then turned into something or didn't very much didn't. But you can go, I appreciate that. You tried something, you went for it. That did not work.

I just think that in general, you know, now making a go of it as a director and feeling like I'm improving every single time, but I'm not really interested in safe. Yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't interest me. And I think that that's part of what I said earlier is that maybe the productions that I saw South Pacific were safe. They were, you know, cute. And I just don't think it's a cute show. There's so much more there to explore. There's so much going on. It's interesting that safe theater might be the only bad kind of theater because theater in its inception is dangerous. It's happening live. It's different every time. So if it feels safe, then you're like, why am I even here? But as a director, I just love the idea of making mistakes in trying something that might be a little different, not different for different sake, because I'm greatly reverent of why something was written.

And I think that that's really important to take into account. You just can't. I'm not going to put a certain show in post-apocalyptic times just because it's new. And of course, now it's not new anyway. So yes, you know what I mean? I love figuring out what was the reason this was written? What are the themes? What's the what's the musical style? What was important here? And not necessarily just throwing it up the same way it's always been thrown up. But but asking myself the questions, if I didn't know anything about this, what would I do with it? So that's great. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm learning.

[17:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: In episodes past, I've talked a lot about musicals that were in trouble and then miraculously to the theater, God smiled and everything worked out right. In South Pacific, it seems like from the get go, it was going to be a hit. Everyone knew it was going to be a hit. And it was a hit. Yeah. End of story. Like that doesn't happen very often. But it did in this case. Yes. In Los Angeles around this time. How do you say his name? Ezio? Ezio? Ezio Pinza? Yeah. My dad will kill me if I didn't say it right. Because he was he a big? Yeah, he had albums. Oh, that's so cute. Yeah. So Ezio Pinza was contracted at the LA Civic Glide Opera to do some show. The show falls through. But what they were currently producing was the national tour of Annie Get Your Gun, starring one, Mary Martin, and produced by Rogers and Hammerstein.

So R&H already had a relationship with the Civic Glide Opera, because they went to go see the show and you know, talk to Mary. So then the guy in charge says, Hey, the show just fell through for Ezio. Do you have anything that might work? Because we have him under contract. And we need we need something for him to do. And they said, Actually, he might be perfect for Emil Debek. And now we need an Ellie Forbush. You know what Mary Martin who's doing Annie Get Your Gun, she'll be swell as well. And so it all just like fell into place. Amazing. It was kismet. But that's another show. But that's another show. That's a few years later. So everybody and everybody signs on. The thing is, is that opera stars get paid so much money because they don't work very often.

Right? Yeah, that makes sense. You know, Broadway performers are doing eight shows a week. That's not what you do in opera. It's just the materials too crazy. So he had this he was supposed to be getting this huge amount of money. Mary Martin's a huge star, obviously from Annie Get Your Gun and all of her stuff before that. And she's interesting. Do you love do you like Mary Martin? I'm a big Mary Martin. I love Mary Martin. I just watched just because I knew I was going to come see you. I decided to watch her again. Because I hadn't seen her in a while. Yeah. And it just struck me how simple and wonderful and connected she is all the time. So special. Yeah. Just you know, it's sort of like when I watched Jimmy Stewart in cinema.

I just think I think he was ahead of his time in his, you know, is utterly real would would be a wonderful actor right now. Yeah. If you took his performance as a young man and just flipped it to 2020, absolutely holds up. And I feel the same way about Mary Martin that that totally gave me chills. Mary Martin is the Jimmy Stewart of musical theater. There you go. It's true. I'll go with it. Because because their personas are undeniable. There's an element of them to whatever project they do or role they do, to the point where they change the role to be more like them. You know, Mary Martin's Annie in Annie Get Your Gun was very different than Merman and her Dolly and Hello, Dolly was very different than Carol Channing.

But brilliant nonetheless, because they're so talented and so present and so organic and also effortless. You just like the way her voice fell out of her was effortless and continually in all of that. I guess she met Oscar Hammerstein very early out here in Los Angeles. She sang a song that he wrote, like I think it was like Indian Love called because at that point she was still trying to just do like coloratura stuff. Oh, wow. And she said, I'm going to sing a song you may not have heard it before. And he had written it. Oh, isn't that funny? And he liked her. He liked her. He liked her voice. So he introduced her to Jerome Kern. And Jerome Kern said, who is, you know, famous composer showboat.

Jerome Kern said, there are a lot of sopranos who can sing better than you in terms of the soprano world. So I think you should kind of own your voice and do your own thing. And you're going to be phenomenal. And she did. Nobody sounds like Mary Martin. No, unless you're trying to do an impression of Mary Martin. Correct. I don't even know. Has there been anybody who tries to do an impression of Mary Martin? I remember on Forbidden Broadway, they did. I'm swooping because she tends to slide a lot. Oh, that's funny. Like Julie Andrews.

[24:03] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah, there's a swooping quality there, too. There is. There's a little glide. They're both awesome. They are. OK, so they both sign on. But once again, huge stars, huge salaries. They both decide to take a pay cut in order for the show to happen. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. How great. They believed in it that much. Mary Martin brought a lot of ideas to Nellie Forbush, I guess, one time with her husband, who was also her manager. She was in the shower washing her hair and she realized no one's ever washed their hair on stage before. And she ran out of the bathroom stark naked. I was like, babe, I've got it. I've got it. What if I washed my hair on stage? And of course, she went to the phone and called them right up.

So she's the reason that every theater that produces South Pacific has to solve that conundrum. Yep. Thank you, Mary Martin. Thanks, Mary Martin. She would wash her hair on the show. But you didn't get out all of the soap there on stage because there's only so much water you can use. So then you'd go back to the dressing room, wash it again. And so that probably turns into 20 times a week. Yeah. That's an overwashed head. I mean, she better have got some hot oil treatments because can you imagine the split ends over seven years? Right. Seriously. And then sidebar, you know, oftentimes when you produce South Pacific, as was the case when I directed it, our actress had hair that would not work for that time period.

Oh, right. Oh, of course. So she's in a wig. And then you have to wig the shampooing. Oh, so you have a double wig. You have one the shampoo. Of course. Yeah. I didn't even think about that. And it's it's it was great. Our wig person was tremendous. His name is Peter. And he just it just looked seamless. You absolutely couldn't tell that it wasn't her hair. Either wig. It was fantastic. That's fantastic. But she washed a wig. That was a very clean wig. That's a squeaky. You could eat off that wig. I have a feeling it's probably been retired. She's she's in a closet somewhere. She's done. They bring her out for like the before and after in Steel Magnolias. Yeah, maybe she'll find a new life as Frumicera or something, you know, like something's crazy, something crazy.

[25:26] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Wow.

[25:27] Kirsten Chandler: Isn't that beautiful?

[25:28] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes.

[25:29] Kirsten Chandler: What a great compliment.

[25:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Unbelievable.

[25:31] Kirsten Chandler: And yet also very accurate, I think.

[25:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, absolutely.

[25:40] Kirsten Chandler: Um, okay, so South Pacific, the show starts with, well, a great overture, first of all, which I found out something really interesting. Richard Rodgers was so intent on getting the songs right, that he had people help him with, you know, orchestrations and underscoring. The underscoring woman was named Trudy, and she worked with him her entire career. And he was actually kind of intimidated by her, and was one of the reasons why he continually worked with her.

[26:04] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Interesting.

[26:05] Kirsten Chandler: Isn't that cool?

[26:06] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, that is cool.

[26:07] Kirsten Chandler: I think she came on to the team because of Agnes de Milt. She played in ballet classes. And so much of what we probably think of as these scores is from Trudy.

[26:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That is really interesting.

[26:20] Kirsten Chandler: So cool. I love it. But the show starts after that beautiful overture with the two cutest kids you've ever seen in your life.

[26:26] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes.

[26:26] Kirsten Chandler: And they're singing D'etre Moi. Now, I am not a French expert at all, but this means,

[26:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Tell me, tell me,

[26:34] Kirsten Chandler: Why life is beautiful.

[26:36] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, why life is beautiful. Tell me why life is gay.

[26:40] Kirsten Chandler: Life is gay.

[26:42] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Is it because you love me? Something like that.

[26:45] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah, it's like, it must be because you love me.

[26:47] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It must, yeah, okay, that sounds right.

[26:49] Kirsten Chandler: It's very sweet. There's something there that's kind of setting the tone. It's not just about having cute kids. They're telling us the message right from the get-go.

[26:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes, that's very true.

[26:59] Kirsten Chandler: Love is the most important.

[26:59] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Love will conquer all. Let's hope.

[27:01] Kirsten Chandler: And they live in this beautiful place in the South Pacific, this house kind of on a hill that overlooks the gorgeous ocean.

[27:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: He owns a plantation.

[27:10] Kirsten Chandler: And by plantation, I mean, I have my American views of what plantations are.

[27:15] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: What are they in the South Pacific? Do you have...

[27:18] Kirsten Chandler: More islandy.

[27:19] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Do you have...

[27:20] Kirsten Chandler: I don't have them.

[27:25] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: But like, do they have servants, like harvesting pineapples?

[27:29] Kirsten Chandler: Well, I don't know if it goes there, but he does have servants.

[27:32] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Okay, yeah.

[27:32] Kirsten Chandler: In fact, the first one makes his appearance right after Dite Moi.

[27:35] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That is true.

[27:37] Kirsten Chandler: I just didn't know if it was more of like a lifestyle or an actual business where they're growing things, bamboo. I don't know.

[27:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Well, he takes great pride in his plantation. He's taking her around.

[27:46] Kirsten Chandler: I would guess that he doesn't do very much of it himself, so he must have workers.

[27:50] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Okay.

[27:50] Kirsten Chandler: All right.

[27:51] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah.

[27:51] Kirsten Chandler: And it's a gorgeous place. It's owned by this dude, Emil de Beck. And we don't know yet, but these two children are his.

[28:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes.

[28:00] Kirsten Chandler: And they are mixed race. He is French, and he had been married to a Polynesian woman, and they had these two children. Did she pass away?

[28:03] Kirsten Chandler: Oh, I do want to read one quote that, you know, Helen Hayes, Helen Hayes, the famous actress. I love Helen Hayes. Candleshoe. Did you ever see that movie? Of course. The old Disney movie? Yes. Yeah. It's one of our family favorites. We always yank it out. I love those weird old that period in Disney. Jodie Foster. Yes. And Helen Hayes. And there's like, wonderful. There's like jewels. Aren't there? Oh, yeah. There's a hidden treasure. Yeah. I love hidden treasure stores.

[28:07] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes.

[28:08] Kirsten Chandler: Okay.

[28:09] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: The man has lived.

[28:12] Kirsten Chandler: Suffice it to say.

[28:13] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: He's been around a lot.

[28:14] Kirsten Chandler: Okay.

[28:15] Kirsten Chandler: The other day, I decided to sit down and watch a high school production of South Pacific on YouTube. And do you know what? The kid playing Emil de Beck had a gorgeous voice.

[28:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I bet.

[28:25] Kirsten Chandler: But also had the baby powder in his hair because he's supposed to be middle-aged.

[28:29] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Can we discuss that Jodie Foster was in both Freaky Friday and Taxi Driver in the same year?

[28:29] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Of course. Yeah.

[28:29] Kirsten Chandler: That's the joy of high school theater. Anyway, adorable. Love it so much.

[28:32] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So he's on a date with Nellie Forbush, who's our...

[28:35] Kirsten Chandler: Cock-eyed optimist.

[28:36] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, cock-eyed optimist.

[28:37] Kirsten Chandler: Are you kidding me? Retire.

[28:41] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I know.

[28:42] Kirsten Chandler: So famous Helen Hayes wrote something called the 10 most memorable stage performances she had ever seen. And she included, you know, Olivier as Oedipus Brando in Streetcar, Lorette Taylor in Glass Menagerie. And then she fully admitted that in this conversation, you're not supposed to bring up musical comedy, because, you know, because it's not, it's not serious enough, but that she could not help herself. Quote, you cannot analyze Mary Martin's charm any more than you can analyze sunshine. But you can say that she radiates more perfection and sheer joy per cubic foot of actress than any else in recent history.

[28:38] Kirsten Chandler: I think it's really interesting that she begins the show describing herself as a cockeyed optimist.

[28:43] Jeff Parsons: Yes. Because she's green. She comes from a simple life and with a lot of sameness around her. And so nothing has really kind of bumped up to disrupt any of that optimism. But we immediately like her.

[28:58] Kirsten Chandler: She's fantastic. She's adorable. The truest heart you could want. And he adores her as well. In fact, he's fully in love and is ready for her to kind of move in and play house. Like, this is it.

[29:13] Jeff Parsons: Yeah. Because you know, when you see someone across a crowded room, never let her go.

[29:19] Kirsten Chandler: Never let her go. Out of this, they have these twin soliloquies.

[29:25] Jeff Parsons: Yes.

[29:26] Kirsten Chandler: This is interesting. I bet you know the same thing that I know about this.

[29:30] Jeff Parsons: That Mary Martin didn't want to sing with Ezio Cenza.

[29:32] Kirsten Chandler: Right. Because she didn't think she could compete.

[29:35] Jeff Parsons: He has that huge voice, right? And she's like, I'm Mary Martin. No.

[29:40] Kirsten Chandler: We're not going to sing together. It's an interesting thing because now there is a moment. It's one of the many reprises of Some Enchanted Evening, because they just keep bringing that sucker back.

[29:49] Jeff Parsons: Man, there's a lot of reprises on this show.

[29:52] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah, they do. Of course, they had many hits. Every single song is so tremendous that you cannot believe that they all were in one show. You just can't believe it. But yeah, I want to say that they do sing together briefly and it's in front of the shower. I could be wrong.

[30:08] Jeff Parsons: Yeah.

[30:09] Kirsten Chandler: These soliloquies are really beautiful, though. And the music is swelling to this huge finale.

[30:16] Jeff Parsons: And all they're doing is sitting and enjoying a cocktail.

[30:21] Kirsten Chandler: Kind of cool.

[30:22] Jeff Parsons: Yeah. And I think that that is when I had the same realization that you've had about this show, where you're like, this is a drama. This is a musical drama.

[30:29] Kirsten Chandler: And you can see how the music is swelling. There's no singing. There's this one moment where all they're doing is looking at each other. And I think in the script, it says they are falling in love in this moment. So if you don't approach it as a real moment between two actors, between two characters, with something happening that's as huge and sweeping as falling in love, you can see how someone would be like, could somebody get to there's nothing like a day.

[30:58] Jeff Parsons: Yeah.

[30:58] Kirsten Chandler: You know, I mean.

[30:59] Jeff Parsons: Tick tock, tick tock.

[31:00] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah. But how wonderful, like you said, that they would actually have this moment where the only thing going on is falling in love, which is one of the most grand emotions that we can experience here on Earth. You know what I mean?

[31:12] Jeff Parsons: For sure.

[31:13] Kirsten Chandler: It's such a neat moment. Absolutely love it. And these are things with that Rodgers and Hammerstein had been flirting with since the beginning of their career, you know, beginning a show like Oklahoma with just the old lady on the porch with instead of the showgirls that all of the other musicals had been doing.

[31:31] Jeff Parsons: They've been pushing the envelope more and more in terms of what does a musical look like, sound like and tackle in terms of subject matter. And this is I think probably the one where you see them owning it.

[31:46] Kirsten Chandler: Yes.

[31:47] Jeff Parsons: Regardless of whether you think it's successful or not, probably owning it the most.

[31:51] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah. How daring to start a musical like this. First of all, it's the crux of the, you know, the two central characters. But then it, you know, to then open up to where they are and who's around them is an interesting way of starting the show instead of the other way around.

[32:09] Jeff Parsons: And I also think that we need to put ourselves back into 1949 and add a little context. So World War Two affected everybody in this country to a profound, you know, extent. You fast forward four years, only four years later, there's a musical about World War Two coming to Broadway, written by Rodgers and Hammerstein. When has that kind of turnaround ever existed in any of our current art forms? The most that I can think of is maybe like The Hurt Locker, you know, or like a Catherine Bigelow film that's about the Afghanistan, like Zero Dark Thirty. Something like that, where people are like, wow, we're already making a movie about this? You know, like, do we have has enough time passed? So it would have been, I think, incredibly disrespectful four years after this war to begin a show with nothing like a name. You know what I mean?

[33:06] Kirsten Chandler: And I'm wrong.

[33:07] Jeff Parsons: We're not prepared for that.

[33:08] Kirsten Chandler: That's a quick turnaround to address the things that were going on. When we open up on the Marines and Seabees when they're with Bloody Mary, we come to find out that they really are, the whole show is they're just stationed and waiting.

[33:23] Jeff Parsons: Waiting. Endless waiting. That's what James Michener talks about.

[33:26] Kirsten Chandler: Endless waiting, yes. And so, you know, a lot of his, Michener's observations came from having the time to observe around him, to observe the character that became Bloody Mary, just he'd never seen anybody like her. And the study of her in his writing is really fascinating. But anyway, I digress.

[33:46] Jeff Parsons: No, no, I have not served in the military. The closest that I have to a military experience is my mission for the church, because there is kind of like an army type feel. There's, you know, very strict rules. You're up at 6am, da da da da da. And also I was a Spanish speaking missionary. So I was in a culture that was not mine.

[34:06] Kirsten Chandler: I didn't know that. That's very cool.

[34:08] Jeff Parsons: So that whole idea of looking at, and it's problematic for sure, but to look at another culture and almost objectify it because it's so novel. You've never experienced people like this. You've never experienced customs like this. And you're like, this is so entertaining and interesting. And I'm vanilla and I am so used to all of my traditions. Look at all these ones. I'm having the time of my life.

[34:33] Kirsten Chandler: Yes.

[34:33] Jeff Parsons: And that is certainly what I'm getting, you know, from these seabees who are experiencing the Polynesian lifestyle and particularly Bloody Mary.

[34:43] Kirsten Chandler: Yes. They approach them like novelties. And then what was sad was that when it wasn't convenient anymore, they get shooed away.

[34:53] Jeff Parsons: Yes.

[34:54] Kirsten Chandler: And it's their native land. So you're seeing all of that in South Pacific. And it's, I think that the tone has changed as we've matured as socially conscious people to actually have this conversation about what was really going on here. It's not just like, oh, yay, younger than springtime. What's going on on this island?

[35:14] Jeff Parsons: So then how do you show that without it becoming objectification? You know, how do you show that without showing some offensive stereotype?

[35:25] Kirsten Chandler: Right.

[35:26] Jeff Parsons: You know, it's tricky.

[35:26] Kirsten Chandler: Well, first, you cast well. So that's important. Casting with.

[35:32] Jeff Parsons: With integrity.

[35:33] Kirsten Chandler: Integrity. Absolutely. Across the boards. That's important. But I guess that is a central question about a show like South Pacific, which was in so many ways ahead of its time in wanting to deal with the issues of racism and asking tough questions of the audience. One of the things I wanted to just mention was that, you know, there are some people who call South Pacific that racist musical or that racist play. And I feel like that is confused a way of thinking.

[36:04] Jeff Parsons: Yes, there's a racist in South Pacific, namely Nelly, which is.

[36:10] Kirsten Chandler: And probably more probably more than her.

[36:13] Jeff Parsons: Yes. And we talked about that, too.

[36:18] Kirsten Chandler: But I guess that I would say the most central and the glaring racism comes from Nelly and.

[36:21] Jeff Parsons: Which is insane to make someone as likable as your leading lady.

[36:26] Kirsten Chandler: Very, very insane because you love her so much and we spend all of the first act loving her. And then at the very end of the first act, she realizes that he was married to a Polynesian and that his children are mixed race and that they're his children and she can't handle it. And she is faced with her own racism and she doesn't like that one bit.

[36:46] Jeff Parsons: Right. And.

[36:48] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah. So it's really interesting.

[36:50] Jeff Parsons: Challenging to her optimism, her outlook that she's always, you know, professed. And I think that that is that's.

[36:55] Kirsten Chandler: She tries to justify it, too, in the second act. She this you don't understand. Like this is part of me. And, you know, I think we all run into that, especially as like you said, as we become more socially aware and socially conscious, there are things that are a part of us we didn't even know were a part of us. We either have to come up against something that brings them up or they have to be pointed out.

[37:17] Jeff Parsons: Yes.

[37:17] Kirsten Chandler: And we have to be humble enough to go, yeah, you're right.

[37:20] Jeff Parsons: And to Nelly's credit, she reexamines her racism and she chooses love. So she learns and how brave that we had a character, a heroine, the heroine of our piece who has a flaw and then faces her flaw and then decides that she is going to grow from this experience and not be that limited person.

[37:45] Kirsten Chandler: It's an arc that Anna doesn't have in King and I.

[37:48] Jeff Parsons: Yeah.

[37:48] Kirsten Chandler: You know.

[37:49] Jeff Parsons: That's true.

[37:50] Kirsten Chandler: Which is after South Pacific. So like it's a it's a brave it's a brave piece. I really like it.

[37:57] Jeff Parsons: It's super brave and flawed. Yes. But, you know, I guess it brings up that bigger question of how do we how do we go back? And I don't know if you've had this experience like even you look at a movie from 20 years ago or a TV show or whatever, you go like, you know, because we're so much more aware now than we were 20 years ago of what might be considered offensive or what definitely is offensive.

[38:17] Kirsten Chandler: And we didn't see it that way 20 years ago and how we're all awakening to a different way of thinking.

[38:24] Jeff Parsons: There was a span there for a while where I was doing productions of White Christmas every Christmas.

[38:28] Kirsten Chandler: Oh, sure.

[38:29] Jeff Parsons: And I was playing, you know, Phil Davis, who's like the ladies man. And, you know, he's always got a girl on each arm and flirting with everybody, sometimes inappropriately. And in between the two Christmases, the two holiday seasons, the whole Weinstein thing happens. And I come back to White Christmas and all of a sudden I'm rehearsing this piece that I've done years. And I'm like, oh, everything, every choice that I'm making, I'm like, oh, that's gross. Should I do that? Like, is that OK? You know, completely different experience, but based on all of the realizations that I had about the experiences of women and how they're specifically portrayed in not only theater, but just in media in general.

[39:13] Kirsten Chandler: And that brings up that point of like, how do we produce in so many ways a beautiful breakthrough piece of theater that may be flawed in places? How do we depict those moments? Do we soft pedal them? I don't pretend to know the answer. Sometimes I feel like...

[39:29] Jeff Parsons: It needs a conversation.

[39:31] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah, absolutely. But you're also examining a time period. For example, let's just take the Seabees and Marines with Bloody Mary, that they treated her as a novelty and then shooed her aside when she wasn't convenient. If you look at it, that can be a growth experience. Does that make sense? I don't know if I'm saying it right, but...

[39:50] Jeff Parsons: No, no, I totally get that.

[39:52] Kirsten Chandler: Oh, I definitely want to say also that on the day at the plantation, Emile sings Some Enchanted Evening, which someone sings Some Enchanted Evening to you, you fall in love.

[40:06] Jeff Parsons: Yeah, you better.

[40:08] Kirsten Chandler: Do you know that Andrew Lloyd Webber said that all he ever wanted to do in his career was write a song as good as Some Enchanted Evening?

[40:13] Jeff Parsons: And he's still trying. I didn't say that on a Musical Tune podcast.

[40:18] Kirsten Chandler: But I think he would agree with you though, because that's how perfect Some Enchanted Evening was to him.

[40:24] Jeff Parsons: It may be one of the best love songs ever, ever written.

[40:27] Kirsten Chandler: My gosh. But after that, he has a confession to her. Now, this is kind of telling because he doesn't confess that he was married to a Polynesian woman. He instead confesses the thing that he thought was actually going to ruin things between him and Nellie, which is that he's killed someone. And he brings it up a lot.

[40:49] Jeff Parsons: Yeah, and she just wraps her brain around that.

[40:54] Kirsten Chandler: And yeah, exactly. She's able to wrap her brain around that one.

[40:58] Jeff Parsons: But he brings it up because he's afraid that it'll be a deal breaker.

[41:02] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah, exactly. So he doesn't even think about the children being possible deal breaker.

[41:07] Jeff Parsons: Good for him.

[41:08] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah. Now, this, of course, leads me to a little game that I want to play with you called Would You Rather.

[41:14] Jeff Parsons: Oh, good.

[41:15] Kirsten Chandler: Now, Would You Rather, which you're already married to the Stan Chandler.

[41:22] Jeff Parsons: Yes.

[41:22] Kirsten Chandler: But if you were not, would you rather marry a murderer, someone who's convicted of murder?

[41:27] Jeff Parsons: Okay.

[41:28] Kirsten Chandler: Marry a drug addict or marry a sex offender?

[41:32] Jeff Parsons: Oh, good God.

[41:33] Kirsten Chandler: It's a fun game of Would You Rather.

[41:35] Jeff Parsons: I would think a drug addict.

[41:37] Kirsten Chandler: Really? That's actually, I think, my deal breaker.

[41:42] Jeff Parsons: Sex offender isn't your deal breaker?

[41:44] Kirsten Chandler: Technically, you could pee on the side of the highway and be a sex offender.

[41:49] Jeff Parsons: Well, that's true. If you think about the, like, the gradient.

[41:52] Kirsten Chandler: There is a gradient.

[41:53] Jeff Parsons: Yes, there's a gradient. I guess I'd have to know what the crime was. Now, you know, Emil had a very good reason for killing the person.

[41:59] Kirsten Chandler: Exactly.

[41:59] Jeff Parsons: So I, you know, there's, context is key.

[42:02] Kirsten Chandler: Context is very key.

[42:02] Jeff Parsons: But if I'm just saying, oh, you killed somebody, you offended someone sexually, or you're a drug addict, I feel like, okay, so you're hurting others versus hurting yourself.

[42:12] Kirsten Chandler: Fair enough.

[42:13] Jeff Parsons: And so if, like, the drug addict, maybe we could get them to rehab.

[42:17] Kirsten Chandler: Can you imagine that conversation?

[42:20] Jeff Parsons: I know I just sang Some Enchanted Evening, but I have to tell you something.

[42:24] Kirsten Chandler: I'm a registered sex offender.

[42:26] Jeff Parsons: And you're like, oh, I'm just putting it out there.

[42:29] Kirsten Chandler: Did you happen to pee on the side of the highway?

[42:31] Jeff Parsons: Just hoping.

[42:33] Kirsten Chandler: Because I heard.

[42:34] Jeff Parsons: I heard that that could be a thing.

[42:36] Kirsten Chandler: Context clues are everything when it comes to relationships.

[42:45] Jeff Parsons: Back to South Pacific.

[42:47] Kirsten Chandler: We go to the beach and we meet the sailors.

[42:49] Jeff Parsons: We meet Bloody Mary, who's a local.

[42:51] Kirsten Chandler: She sells human heads.

[42:53] Jeff Parsons: All sorts of things.

[42:54] Kirsten Chandler: Yes. Grass skirts.

[42:55] Jeff Parsons: Uh-huh.

[42:57] Kirsten Chandler: She's an entrepreneur, let's be honest, right? She's a businesswoman. She's also being really heavily taken advantage of by the military. Does she live there or does she live on Balihai? That's my question.

[43:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: She lives in Balihai.

[43:13] Kirsten Chandler: Okay. So Balihai is an island across from where they are. You can just you can barely see it. It's kind of a mystical sort of place. You need a boat to get there. Particularly one of the Seabees by the name of Luther Billis, who's also has kind of created the side hustle of doing laundry.

[43:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: He's a side hustler.

[43:31] Kirsten Chandler: Creating grass roots.

[43:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: However, he can make money. He's like smuggling cigarettes for all the soldiers.

[43:39] Kirsten Chandler: He's obsessed with getting over to Balihai. He says because there's this pig ceremony that he really wants to watch, but it's because he keeps hearing the bracelet, right?

[43:49] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, the boar's head bracelet.

[43:51] Kirsten Chandler: But also, you realize later that it's because he hears that girls dance with their tops off at the ceremony and there's like possible orgy type things happening. So that's like the real reason that he wants to go. But he really wants to go to Balihai, but he can't get a boat to go over there because you have to be a commander. Enter, what's his name? Enter Lieutenant Cable, who is new to the island and he does have clearance.

[44:15] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Lieutenant Cable, he's a handsome fella.

[44:25] Kirsten Chandler: Usually.

[44:26] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. Do you know what's interesting is instead of like in Oklahoma or in Carousel, where you had the funny couple and the romantic couple, in this show, you have two romantic couples.

[44:37] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah.

[44:37] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You have Emile Debeck and Nellie Forbush and then Cable and Liat. You have two different romances happening at the same time that are both very serious.

[44:45] Kirsten Chandler: Yes.

[44:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So Cable has a girl from back home, right? And sometimes they have that song, sometimes they don't. When I did the show, we did not do that number.

[44:53] Kirsten Chandler: Which one?

[44:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: My Girl From Back Home.

[44:56] Kirsten Chandler: Oh, we didn't either.

[44:57] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah.

[44:57] Kirsten Chandler: I guess it's not part of the licensing currently.

[45:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It's in the movie and it was in the revival, but I didn't know if it was in, it's probably...

[45:04] Kirsten Chandler: Not in our version.

[45:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Okay. Nellie, as the nurse, has come back to her, you know, friends and has decided to give up Emile Debeck. Maybe it's just not a good idea. Things are moving too fast. There's this whole murder thing.

[45:19] Kirsten Chandler: Never good.

[45:20] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. I'm just gonna wash that man right out of my hair. Cue washing your hair. I have a really funny story real fast.

[45:28] Kirsten Chandler: Okay.

[45:29] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So I did a benefit with Mitzi Gaynor.

[45:33] Kirsten Chandler: Oh, awesome.

[45:34] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: This was just like a few years ago. And we shared a microphone, we shared like a body mic. And she did her number and then she would go off stage and I would meet her over there and she would take it off and the sound guy would put it on me. And then after the following number, then I would go out there.

[45:51] Kirsten Chandler: Okay.

[45:53] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So we do the dress rehearsal. She sings wash that man right out of my hair. She's like, you know, holding herself up at the piano. Just great. Mitzi Gaynor, by the way, star of South Pacific, the film. So the night of the performance, we're doing it. And, you know, the boomchuck starts for wash that man and she turns to the audience and goes, you all are gonna love this. And she reaches behind the piano and grabs shaving cream and puts it in her hair and starts like washing her hair on stage with this shaving cream. I'm off stage with the sound guy who is freaking out. She didn't tell anybody. She didn't tell anybody. He's like, my microphone, my microphone, which leads me to my question. What do you do with sound? Does she take off the microphone? No. How do you not? How do you not get the microphone wet?

[46:43] Kirsten Chandler: Well, it's tricky. As I recall, she would lean her head back. Okay. So if her mic was, you know, positioned correctly, she could lean her head back and just let the water hit, you know, go back rather than come forward. And that was key. I seem to recall that they were like, please don't tip forward because then we've got a problem.

[47:08] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, that makes sense. So it's doable, but it's tricky.

[47:11] Kirsten Chandler: It is tricky. The other thing was, P.S., getting warm water to come through the unit was a challenge because it's like, right. So the poor girl was like, can we please? Yeah. So it had to be of a certain temperature so that she didn't freeze. I know it's a lot of challenges. Thanks, Mary Martin. Yeah. Good job. Appreciate it. Do you know that Richard Rogers was really upset because they thought that this number was going to be, you know, smash, bang, home run. And when they started performing it, like it was getting tepid applause at best. And they're like, how is this even possible? Like she's washing her hair. And then someone told him everybody is talking during the song to decide whether or not Mary Martin's actually washing her hair. So then they added a verse of her singing the song before even getting in the shower so that people would listen to the song and then enjoy the shampooing.

[48:03] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah. Interesting stuff. So she washes that man, but not super great, because then Emile Dubac comes back and sings another reprise of Some Enchanted Evening. And then she's in for realsies.

[48:14] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes. I believe that's the scene where he she says, I need to ask you about this. I need more.

[48:19] Kirsten Chandler: Oh, right, right, right. And so then he gives them to her. And it certainly seems like it was a justifiable homicide. It was this bad guy who came into the village and was like bullying people and hurting people and saying, you know, and then stood up to him. And then he got they got in a fight. And he does say that he came at him or something like that, but he defends himself, but actually like strangles him.

[48:37] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Well, I think he that's crazy. Yeah. And he oh, and he says, and then I would do it again, I think to defend my this is good. Yeah, I and I could be South Pacific police don't don't come after me.

[48:59] Kirsten Chandler: I think you're fine. Okay. I think I think I'm close to right. Like I'd have to have this right in front of me. But I think I remember seeing the South Pacific police in my great grandma's basement.

[49:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Okay. Okay, good. Hopefully they're busy with the ketchup. They don't need to come after me. No worries. So Nellie's she's good with it. Yeah, based on that whole thing. And that's when she sings one of my favorites. I'm in love with a wonderful guy.

[49:19] Kirsten Chandler: Oh, so great.

[49:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And originally they called I'm in love with a wonderful murderer. Does that have the same ring to it? And then they thought that wasn't so good. So they changed it.

[49:30] Kirsten Chandler: Better vowel. It's good. And now it can be sung universally doesn't have to be specific to that moment. Or put it in your cabaret. It'll be fine. That you've heard the story. Of course, when Mary Martin first heard it, Richard Rodgers played on the piano, and she sang it and then fell off the piano. And he said, I want you to do that. Yeah, don't ever don't ever.

[49:53] Kirsten Chandler: Yes. So sweet. The commanders have called Emile to back in. Yes. To ask for his help in this mission that might turn the tides on the war in that area. And he says, I'm not going to because I'm in a relationship now.

[50:08] Kirsten Chandler: Yes. Which is interesting because the kids didn't come up.

[50:14] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Well, that brings me to an interesting point, because I remember you saying, like, think about maybe what your most or least favorite moments in the musical are. And I it was a very specific sticking point that we discussed the actor who played Emile had a really big problem with that. It's like, why is it that he is unwilling to help them out? Because he talks about Nellie and how he's he's in this relationship and that's everything to him.

[50:30] Kirsten Chandler: Yes.

[50:37] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And then the only thing. Yes. And then flashing forward, as soon as that's not working, he's like, OK, I'll find I'll go.

[50:42] Kirsten Chandler: Right. And the actor, Robert Townsend, was saying, what about his kids?

[50:49] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. As a father myself, I have a huge problem with this. It's a I think a huge flaw in the writing.

[50:54] Kirsten Chandler: Huge flaw. Yeah. You know, so how do we talk through this? How do we, you know, make it so that maybe it's just a moment of such sadness that he acts on impulse to help Cable? It's the last thing that just happened. So it's the one I suppose. But that's the best we could do, because it really it doesn't make any sense. You're right. He would leave his children.

[51:16] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah. So he says no. Bloody Mary has, you know, sung about Bali Hai and has convinced Cable that this is someplace that he'd like to visit.

[51:28] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So Bali Hai it is. Yes. Now, the first notes of Bali Hai are very specifically taken from the pentatonic Eastern scale.

[51:35] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah, maybe that's what I should say. So, yeah, like there's a very different kind of harmonic scale in Eastern music. Yeah. That Richard Rogers was really trying to encapsulate. And it honestly becomes the motif for most of the score. In fact, isn't that how the overture starts?

[51:53] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Starts. Yep. Yep. Very, very powerful three notes. So he goes to Bali Hai and meets Bloody Mary's daughter, Liat.

[52:01] Kirsten Chandler: Yes. They have some loving times.

[52:09] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: They do. Instantly, in fact.

[52:16] Kirsten Chandler: Yes. And she also doesn't speak because she doesn't speak English. She can say a few words. Yeah. They try. Yeah. They try to communicate, but they're instead speaking the language of love. And she sees a vulnerability in him, perhaps things he's seen, things he's been through already as a lieutenant, that pulls her into him. That's what we worked on.

[52:36] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So it's not just like, that's a lot. It's another problematic. Well, another, this, maybe this would have happened back then. It's to Bloody Mary, this is maybe her daughter's way out of this life. But it's crude. It's kind of shocking. She's giving her daughter to a man.

[52:54] Kirsten Chandler: That she doesn't know.

[52:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Correct. But he has all the right. Checks all the boxes. To get her out. Yeah. So yeah. On my mission, there were two attempts to get me to marry people on my mission.

[53:07] Kirsten Chandler: Is that right? Wow. Very serious ones.

[53:15] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Wow. There was one woman who was married to another man. My missionary companion and I were teaching an English class, like a free English class. And she came and she gave us both Christmas cards. So we opened the cards and my mission companions, it just said, like, Merry Christmas, love so-and-so. And then I opened mine, a whole page like fell out of the letter. And I was like, well, what is this? And it was this whole plan about the next English class that I come to, don't wear glasses. And then that will let me know that you're as in love with me as I am with you. And we'll run off together.

[53:51] Kirsten Chandler: Did you know this person at all?

[53:52] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I mean, I had taught her English and we had also visited their home a couple of times to say prayers and stuff. And I was freaked out. I was 19 years old. Had certainly never dated girls. Yeah. And so I called my mission president. I'm like, I don't know what to do. What do I do? And he's like, it's okay. It's okay. You guys are very generous and you're in uniform and it can be confusing for people. And that's kind of where we left it. And so I just made sure to wear my glasses the next day.

[54:26] Kirsten Chandler: Wow. The next time. That was your message.

[54:26] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. And I mean, I never saw her again, but. And isn't that interesting? Because I can't imagine what you just described. Yeah. That's a world I don't know. And it feels, I mean, it feels almost offensive to like share that experience, but it happened to me. Yeah. And I don't, I certainly don't blame her. I had been to her home. It was not the dream.

[54:47] Kirsten Chandler: Does that often happen in the mission?

[54:52] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. Wow. You know, and you're sometimes in these areas and you represent for better or worse, maybe because Americans are really good at advertising ourselves as the epitome of life, but, you know, people buy it for whatever reason and it happens.

[55:05] Kirsten Chandler: Wow. So I wonder if on some level, that's what is going on with Bloody Mary, you know, like she's buying into this package that Cable exemplifies. And America exemplified.

[55:17] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. That's really interesting. So now it's Cable's turn to fall madly in love with someone and he does.

[55:30] Kirsten Chandler: Yes. He's in love with Liat, sings another perfect song, Younger Than Springtime.

[55:36] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Perfect song. And which. How did these two songs come from the same musical? Seriously. Two of the most beautiful love songs ever. I believe Younger Than Springtime was written for something else. Is that right?

[55:45] Kirsten Chandler: I didn't know that. And they were having a hard time finding a song and they're like, well, what about this one? We had played with this melody and then they wrote it and it was perfect.

[55:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Wow. That's super cool because it really fits that moment.

[56:00] Kirsten Chandler: Oh, my gosh. Well, I did the show at Tuakon in southern Utah and they turned Younger Than Springtime into like, because you can flood the stage at Tuakon. They like turn on this river and then like the water will rush over the stage. It's pretty it's really impressive because it's outside in the canyon. And so there when we were in Bali Hai, there were like a waterfall in the back of these red rocks was like going and then the waterfall turns on, you know, full blast and the water just drips down and comes and covers Liat and Cable.

[56:28] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Are you kidding me? Like eternity. What's it called? From Here to Eternity.

[56:32] Kirsten Chandler: Oh, like from, you know, from here to eternity with the water rushing over them. People lost their minds because the show can, I think, withstand a lot of texture, you know, because there is it is just about people.

[56:44] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. Do they try to find a place for the river to flow in every show?

[56:51] Kirsten Chandler: They sure do. I believe I believe there was a production of Fiddler on the Roof when Anatevka was flooded.

[56:57] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That makes me happy.

[57:03] Kirsten Chandler: To look at every show. That was years ago. Annie, now could the Hudson River.

[57:08] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: In their Hoovervilles being like, we'd like to thank you for flooding us.

[57:16] Kirsten Chandler: And Bloody Mary sings Happy Talk, just a cute little song. But why does she? I'm not sure I have to remember. Is it just more about like, here she is? You remember you love her, take her to America? Yes. She has an agenda. You know, the way I approached it was not a cutesy number about the hands, but more about like how Liat's been taught to do a dance or a, you know, a hand dance. You know, this is almost ritual. Yes. So she nudges her to do it rather than it being all this, you know, how it's great. I love that. Unfortunately, Cable can't do it. Here's another racist in the show. Yeah. He is more evolved about it. I mean, he's tortured about it. Yeah. He says this isn't right. And he's the one who sings, you've got to be carefully taught. He's looking at it from like a realistic place. What am I going to do when I bring this woman back? But at the same time, he knows that it's wrong of him to feel this way. It's just he can't push past it.

[58:36] Jeff Parsons: Yeah. I remember this is this is embarrassing to admit, but I remember going on a date with a boy and feeling that way, feeling that way about I can't push past this to like introduce this to my family feeling like I hate how I am not with a girl right now because I would love to be looked at and regarded by society in a certain way.

[58:56] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that interesting? Isn't that terrible? And it's like, how unfair is that to my date?

[59:02] Jeff Parsons: Right. Awful. Well, I think that maybe the evolution of all of us as humans is to come to a place where it's not about perception. It's just about following truth and following heart.

[59:12] Kirsten Chandler: Amen. Yeah. But it takes us all a while to get there in different ways. You know, like everybody's on a journey.

[59:18] Jeff Parsons: Yeah, exactly. When you say it's unfair to your date, of course. But it's also understandable with where you were at at the time, what you'd been taught. Right. Right. About what was proper or right. And having to ask yourself bigger questions at a very young age. You know, it's tough.

[59:34] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah. Of course, Bloody Mary is horribly upset.

[59:37] Jeff Parsons: Yeah. She throws his watch, right?

[59:39] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah. Good for you. You've done your work.

[59:42] Jeff Parsons: I tried. I tried. After that, now Cable and Emile Debeck are both loveless.

[59:47] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah. And both kind of in a broken-hearted situation, but from opposite sides of it. Right. Where he one is the one the rejectee and one's the rejector.

[59:56] Jeff Parsons: Yeah, exactly. In this book, I found the original scene going into Carefully Taught.

[1:00:02] Kirsten Chandler: Oh, and it was between Nellie and Lieutenant Cable. They do have a brief discussion in the.

[1:00:07] Jeff Parsons: But is this something that was cut?

[1:00:09] Kirsten Chandler: Mm hmm. Oh, so Cable's kind of taking out on Nellie his own self-hatred for having rejected Liat. And it says, damn it to hell, Cable shouts to Nellie. Why do you look so damned shocked? What's the difference if her hair is blonde and curly or black and straight? If I want her to be my wife, why can't I have her?

[1:00:30] Jeff Parsons: You can, Nellie replies. It's just that people I mean, they say it never works, don't they?

[1:00:36] Kirsten Chandler: They do, Cable answers in disgust. And then everybody does their damnedest to prove it. A hell of a chance Liat and I would have in one of those little gray stone and timber houses on the main line. Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Cable entertained last Tuesday with a housewarming. Nobody came.

[1:01:00] Jeff Parsons: Wow. Oh, and then he went into carefully taught and that was cut because they felt it was too much.

[1:01:06] Kirsten Chandler: Too much for the time.

[1:01:08] Jeff Parsons: Yeah. Instead, it's so interesting.

[1:01:10] Kirsten Chandler: Oh, wow. Instead, it now became between Cable and Debeck.

[1:01:14] Jeff Parsons: Yeah. Sharing their experience.

[1:01:16] Kirsten Chandler: Then I guess we can kind of fast forward to Emile Debeck singing yet another perfect song.

[1:01:21] Jeff Parsons: This nearly was mine.

[1:01:23] Kirsten Chandler: I mean, yeah. You know, it's interesting with if I may, Robert Townsend played Emile in our production and, you know, a finer actor there never was. He's just so, so talented in so many ways. And he's just also a glorious singer to watch an actor just fill a song like that. That is just it's very simple. There's not a lot going on, just his heart. And he it was so compelling. I can't even tell you. I'm sure you can imagine. So those moments are just so amazing. Just sit back and go, good God, the talent that I get to work with. Sometimes it's amazing.

[1:02:06] Jeff Parsons: That's so cool.

[1:02:08] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah. OK, now Cable and Debeck are on their mission, right? Because they have Emile Debeck after knowing that Nelly's not a thing, has decided to go through with it.

[1:02:17] Jeff Parsons: Yep. He decides that in the scene, he says, I'm with you. All right, let's do it. Now, it's a very intense action sequence. And the way that we as an audience experience it is through the radio.

[1:02:30] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah. Now, during the mission, is it successful?

[1:02:34] Jeff Parsons: Yes. But however, Cable, Cable dies.

[1:02:38] Kirsten Chandler: Dies.

[1:02:39] Jeff Parsons: Oh, that's rough, actually.

[1:02:41] Kirsten Chandler: Really hard. You hear the oncoming, you know, the enemy is approaching. You hear the shots. It then goes to, you know, that fuzz sound. And then you hear that he was killed.

[1:02:51] Jeff Parsons: Oh, yeah.

[1:02:52] Kirsten Chandler: Whoo. I'm feeling that right now. Thinking about that. Sorry, Joe. I hope he learned some lessons. But man, he was a tortured guy.

[1:03:02] Jeff Parsons: Yes, he was. Emile comes back, though, alive, and he comes back to the plantation.

[1:03:06] Kirsten Chandler: And Nelly is there with the children.

[1:03:09] Jeff Parsons: Yes. And there's the reprise of Détémois.

[1:03:12] Kirsten Chandler: Yes. It should be mentioned that there was there's a beautiful moment on the beach where Nelly talks to Emile, but he's not there.

[1:03:18] Jeff Parsons: Oh, really?

[1:03:19] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah, I remember this. She just says, I was so foolish. You know, it's it's like her asking for forgiveness. And I think she sings the 15th reprise of Some Enchanted Evening at that point.

[1:03:31] Jeff Parsons: Yeah. But she's saying, like, don't let him go. You know, never let him go.

[1:03:35] Kirsten Chandler: So she denounces her own way of thinking. And the next scene, you see her with the children. I don't know if we're supposed to believe that this is that she has taken them in. You know, like she's she's caring for them or will in the future. If Emile never comes back. I don't know.

[1:03:55] Jeff Parsons: She doesn't know if Emile's alive because and nobody does really.

[1:03:58] Kirsten Chandler: So I think she did. I think she she rushed to them.

[1:04:01] Jeff Parsons: Yeah. In that moment.

[1:04:03] Kirsten Chandler: So that's pretty cool. And then he he appears. And now there's a family.

[1:04:07] Jeff Parsons: And again, another very quiet moment at the end of the show. It's all without words that they sit together as a family and all they're doing is eating soup.

[1:04:16] Kirsten Chandler: And just in the front, Emile and Nellie reach across and join hands. And that's the end of the whole show.

[1:04:24] Jeff Parsons: Wow. Yeah.

[1:04:25] Kirsten Chandler: That's special.

[1:04:26] Jeff Parsons: So it ends. It begins and ends quietly.

[1:04:29] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah. You know, but profoundly.

[1:04:32] Jeff Parsons: Incredibly.

[1:04:34] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah.

[1:04:36] Jeff Parsons: So that's so great.

[1:04:39] Kirsten Chandler: Oh, wow. I so appreciate the the standard and example of people like Oscar Hammerstein and all the creators of the show. And the work is not done. And I would I think that they would agree that that we shouldn't just leave it to them to have solved everything because it's so not solved. We need to take it with us and now go forward and make it better and do more.

[1:05:06] Jeff Parsons: Yes. These were the forward thinkers of their time. And their legacy is to hand that forward thinking to us at a different time and keep it pushing forward.

[1:05:17] Kirsten Chandler: Um, I remember this moment at my dinner table at my house when I was in high school. Maybe it wasn't high school. Maybe it was junior high. But they had it was when Martin Luther King Day became a holiday.

[1:05:30] Jeff Parsons: Oh, and there were certain people in my family who didn't understand why.

[1:05:34] Kirsten Chandler: Because and and I and I don't want to my own horn, but I like stood up and said, why we needed this holiday?

[1:05:40] Jeff Parsons: And good for you.

[1:05:41] Kirsten Chandler: And much to the credit of the elders of my family, they said, well, that's why the next generation will be better than we are.

[1:05:48] Jeff Parsons: Yeah.

[1:05:49] Kirsten Chandler: And sometimes that that takes some humility, right? And to to be like, well, I did the best that I could, but it sure isn't good enough. And I hope the next generation will take it even further.

[1:06:01] Jeff Parsons: Yes.

[1:06:02] Kirsten Chandler: I think that that's what makes it interesting anyway, to look back at something like South Pacific and to see the protagonist, Nellie, facing her own demons.

[1:06:10] Jeff Parsons: That's a beautiful thing.

[1:06:12] Kirsten Chandler: And if we keep doing that, keep facing our new demons. You know what I mean? With openness, love, acceptance and an open mind to hear each other. You know, we don't condemn, but we try to understand where people came from and why their minds might be closed or tight, according to what they were taught and how to how do we open minds without without talking hate to each other and becoming so polarized that there's no discussion.

[1:06:41] Jeff Parsons: I think it's wonderful that you brought that up with your family. You were brave enough to do it, but they were brave enough to say, well, that's why you're your generation is going to be better than us because they very well could have said, you don't know what you're talking.

[1:06:54] Kirsten Chandler: Of course they could. Of course.

[1:06:56] Jeff Parsons: Yeah. So that's kind of that's kind of makes me gives me hope. You know, those conversations give me hope.

[1:07:02] Kirsten Chandler: And I think one of the real ways that we do it is through art, consuming it, creating it and then having conversations afterward, because anybody who goes to South Pacific and expects escapism without conversation, I think, isn't taking advantage of the piece that was created, you know?

[1:07:20] Jeff Parsons: And I think that's why not why we do theater. We we want to put ourselves in an uncomfortable place so that we learn something and we go.

[1:07:27] Kirsten Chandler: I think some of the best things I see are the things that cause me. It's a good discomfort because I like that. You know, I don't shy away from it, but I think you make a good point. We don't go to feel comfortable.

[1:07:39] Jeff Parsons: Yeah. Even if it is the exhilaration of I mean, because escapism can be thrilling.

[1:07:43] Kirsten Chandler: Oh, absolutely. You know, and in a way that can be fun.

[1:07:46] Jeff Parsons: Yeah, absolutely.

[1:07:48] Kirsten Chandler: We just know when it's not fluffy.

[1:07:50] Jeff Parsons: That's why it's so funny that I reacted to that costume piece with the it was just going for yucks. It was like a vaudeville version of of Luther Villis's hard hat. And I was like, no, no, no, that's not that's not what's happening.

[1:08:06] Kirsten Chandler: It's not the show.

[1:08:07] Jeff Parsons: Yeah, exactly. Thank you so much for.

[1:08:10] Kirsten Chandler: Oh, my gosh. I had such a wonderful time.

[1:08:12] Jeff Parsons: Me, too. Everybody, if you want to request a show that we do here on A Musical Theatre Podcast, you can always email me at a musical podcast at gmail dot com. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram and Twitter at a musical podcast for more great content.

[1:08:30] Kirsten Chandler: Jeff, how do we follow what you're up to? I mean, you're always directing stuff. Do you have any projects that you want to talk about coming up?

[1:08:37] Jeff Parsons: Well, coming up for me next is Kismet at Musical Theater Guild.

[1:08:41] Kirsten Chandler: Yes. Wonderful.

[1:08:42] Jeff Parsons: So, yes. Come see that.

[1:08:44] Kirsten Chandler: It's May 3rd.

[1:08:46] Jeff Parsons: Oh, exciting.

[1:08:48] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah. This will be out by then.

[1:08:50] Jeff Parsons: Oh, it will?

[1:08:51] Kirsten Chandler: Yeah. Great.

[1:08:53] Jeff Parsons: Yeah. So, yeah. Come see Kismet.

[1:08:56] Kirsten Chandler: Fantastic. Awesome.

[1:08:58] Jeff Parsons: All right, everybody, have a wonderful day.

[1:09:01] Kirsten Chandler: And I'm going to now close singing another reprise of Some Enchanted Evening.