About the work
South Pacific is a musical by Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (lyrics), with a book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan, premiered on Broadway in 1949. Based on James A. Michener's Pulitzer-winning Tales of the South Pacific, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama itself—only the second musical ever to do so.
Plot
On a Pacific island during the Second World War, the American nurse Nellie Forbush falls in love with the older French plantation owner Emile de Becque. When she learns that he has children from an earlier relationship with a Polynesian woman, she wrestles with her own ingrained racial prejudice. In a parallel love story, the young Lieutenant Cable falls for the local girl Liat but founders on the same prejudices. When Cable dies on a dangerous reconnaissance mission that de Becque joins, and de Becque returns safely, Nellie overcomes her bias and embraces him and his children.
Cultural significance
South Pacific was remarkably bold for its time in making racial prejudice a central theme—the song You've Got to Be Carefully Taught, arguing that bigotry is learned, provoked controversy and calls for its removal, which Rodgers and Hammerstein refused. With numbers like Some Enchanted Evening, Bali Ha'i, and I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair, it became one of the duo's most successful works. It won ten Tony Awards and remains a high point of the golden age of the American musical.