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1 results

  • 11 - Minor Feelings about South Pacific

  • from Part III - The Musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein
  • Edited by William A. Everett, University of Missouri, Kansas City
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Rodgers and Hammerstein
    Published online:
    08 August 2026
    Print publication:
    03 September 2026, pp 166-185

  • Summary

    This chapter addresses South Pacific’s complex racial politics not only through an analysis of its narrative, World War II historical context and yellowface performances but also through an exploration of how the musical organises affect, a slippery, knotted and somewhat vague term that in the final analysis comes to mean the capacity to move and be moved. Taking into account James Michener’s collection of short stories Tales of the South Pacific (1947), several of which inspired the musical, the chapter addresses how racism and anti-racism resonate in the musical, the creation and embodiment of its Asian and Pacific Islander (API) characters and its promotion of American liberalism. It also discusses in depth the 2021 Chichester Festival Theatre production directed by Daniel Evans and its re-envisioning of the character Bloody Mary, played by Joanna Ampil, and her song ‘Happy Talk’.