Their budding romance goes swimmingly until Emile introduces Nellie to his half-Polynesian children - real-life siblings Jesse and Kelsey Yip, who couldn’t be more adorable - in a true record-scratch moment. Sasser’s hefty, alluring baritone is plenty persuasive all by itself. She is attracted but wary right up until the lushly appointed “Some Enchanted Evening,” one of the all-time great Rodgers and Hammerstein tunes. Sasser as an ultra-suave Frenchman with a shady past - “Who is not running from something?” he wonders out loud - Emile is obviously smitten by Nellie. The play opens with Nellie on a coffee date with Emile de Becque, a plantation owner she met at the officer’s club not long before. She is unabashedly, as she sings in a voice more sturdy than sparkly, a “Cockeyed Optimist” if ever there was one. A plucky Navy nurse from Little Rock, Nellie has a go-get-‘em attitude and an accent as broad as the side of a barn, which Ballenger seems to enjoy laying on as thick as possible. The fulcrum of the story, loosely based on the 1947 James Michener’s 1947 book “Tales of the South Pacific,” is one Ensign Nellie Forbush, played by TUTS newcomer Natalie Ballenger. Despite the exotic WWII setting, “South Pacific” boils down to two couples whose love is warped by prejudice, a topic as sensitive and relevant as ever. Instead, director Taibi Magar delivers a faithful and pointed reading of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic musical. 20, is not quite as audacious, although cartography nerds may indeed drool over the wall-size map of the Coral Sea. Its first revival since 2010, onstage at the Hobby Center through Feb. Featuring actual scuba divers and a life-size lagoon onstage, it went a long way toward establishing TUTS as one of the nation’s premiere regional theater companies. Theater Under the Stars’ 1972 production of “South Pacific” at Miller Outdoor Theatre set a high bar. The cast of Theatre Under the Stars' "South Pacific" Photo: Melissa Taylor
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