South Pacific is a treat not to be missed (From The Oxford Times)

South Pacific is a treat not to be missed

1:28pm Wednesday 21st December 2011 in Gray Matter By Christopher Gray

Nine more days remain for audiences to enjoy the wonderful production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific at the New Theatre, Oxford. This has already helped to make it a special Christmas for many thousands, and I urge those who have not yet seen it to seize the chance.

The Lincoln Center Theater show — a triumph on Broadway and in the West End — is a welcome reminder of what musicals used to be like. With most modern shows you are lucky if you hear one memorable song; South Pacific is packed with them. They include — do I really need to list them? — Some Enchanted Evening, Younger Than Springtime, Bali Ha’i, Happy Talk and A Cockeyed Optimist.

The woeful state of the modern musical is noted by Neil Tennant, of the Pet Shop Boys, in a well-reasoned article in the latest Spectator. Fresh from seeing the Royal Shakespeare Company’s hit show Matilda, he judges it to be “an excellent production with first-rate, even brilliant performances and a great story”. Alas, in his view, it has no decent songs.

Tennant writes: “It contains the sort of music you only find in musicals; it has no relevance to contemporary music; it exists in a creative ghetto. The musical has become divorced from popular culture.”

I fear that he is probably right. Ten years ago, the Pet Shop Boys made their own bid for musical success by writing the show Closer to Heaven with Jonathan Harvey. This scarcely set the world on fire, running from May to October 2001 at the Arts Theatre, in London.

Perhaps they should try again.