South Pacific leads worth a revisit? — Page 2

I just don't get how one can sit through Olivo's act 2 and claim she shows no emotion. I've seen her performance from previews until recently. And she keeps getting better and better. She is in tears throughout the the A Boy Like That/I Have a Love scene, and we all know her much talked about "rape" scene. Thankfully the critics (including Brantley and Isherwood) and Tony voters agreed with me. But everyone is entitled to their own opinion, that is the beauty of theater. In my opinion, Hadyn Gwynne gave one of the most lifeless Tony nominated performances I've ever seen. Talk about walking through a performance!

Updated On: 2/8/10 at 07:49 AM

ljay, I know many people who share the same opinion about Olivo, including my entire family who saw the show with me and close friends who saw her at different points throughout the run. Again, opinions, everyone has them.

My problem is that sure, she has the tears, she does the large gestures, but where is it coming from? I think it's a completely inconsistent performance with far too modern characterization. I thought she was still in Washington Heights singing about the lottery! And I found her too mean. Where's the heart? How do we fall in love with you if all you show is a gruff exterior? If you don't see even a glimmer of that, the audience, myself included, will not care, even if Anita is our favorite character ever.

~Steven

Steven, yay from me. I say check him out because he's totally worth it.

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I mean, clearly I'm in the minority since, well, Karen actually won the Tony, haha. But I know I'm not the only one who thinks she wasn't all that brilliant. I wanted to get blown away. I thought Josefina and the orchestra were far better than anything else in that show. Don't worry, I blame Laurents for everything wrong about it. :)

Alightinthedark, I know Anita isn't a bubbly character, but we're supposed to at least care about her. I thought Karen didn't give me anything to like about her, so when I saw her devastated in the second act, it came out of nowhere and I in turn didn't really care. I saw no love for Bernardo, I saw no passion in "America," no sisterly bond with Maria; she just seemed overly mean to me, almost antagonistic to everyone in the show. Now that's not one of Anita's traits.

While I understand trying to make the show more accessible to people now, the story is still set in the 1950s. The direction didn't take the show out of its era. I felt Karen gave a little too much head-shaking "O no he didn't" attitude that I don't think is appropriate for the time period. A little too much In the Heights. Now, if everyone acted modern-day, I'd understand, but she was the only one to appear like that and it threw me out of it whenever she said a sassy one-liner.

Come on, I know I'm not the only one to think any of this. It appears the ones who think along the same lines as I do are not members of BWW. :)

But above all, I blame Laurents for ruining his own classic.

~Steven