South Pacific

Churchill College, Wolfson Hall, 23rd-25th June, 4pm (6pm on 25th), £6

Directed by Sophie Jones

[rating:3/5]

Reviewing in May Week’s autumn days is a test of stamina and patience, particularly when you have to get to Churchill on a stonking hangover for a musical that – it transpired – pushes three hours. Pausing on Grange Road, I mulled over whether I was about to throw up last night’s falafel.  Emetophiles – I didn’t, but it was a rather sobering walk (literally and figuratively).

Its length detracted somewhat from the quality of the piece. It is difficult to see where the cuts could, or should, have been made – perhaps because, I admit, I was unfamiliar with the musical itself – but I did feel that there was some extended choreography that would have been more powerful in brevity; some musical numbers that could have skipped the third, or even second repeat of a phrase.

Saying that, the singing was always good, and sometimes very good – Ashleigh Lamming (playing Nellie Forbush) and Lewis Owen (Emile de Becque) performed particularly beautiful solos and duets which managed to rouse me out of a hangover. I worry it is often difficult to engage with a musical if you are not familiar with it; this certainly applied to many of the songs, but Lamming and Owen’s chemistry and harmony was always sufficiently engaging to preclude my looming coma.

At times a stray note escaped on a rest, and the trumpet certainly screeched from time-to-time; some of the chorus seemed a little confused about the choreography, and there were several lines dropped or fluffed; but I am sure I am not the only hungover person in Cambridge. Broadly, it was well executed, if lacking the tight precision of an ADC pantomime.

The set is the only element of the production that truly excelled; the balmy shores of the musical’s setting were translated into Churchill’s Wolfson Hall through bright lighting, which distilled radiant sunshine on the stage, decorative parasols and drapes, and fire-topped volcanic pistes painted on drapes at the rear of the stage.

If this review sounds a little lacklustre it is because South Pacific’s success is relative. To put on something that managed to be this tight, stylish and accomplished in exam term is a triumph – presuming that they have only been rehearsing intensively for roughly three weeks; to put on something that was only this tight, stylish and accomplished in any other term would earn it less merit.

It was certainly watchable, but it didn’t quite have the energy to sustain itself throughout its own duration, and as the end of the first half drew in, much of the noise on stage was drowned out by the sound of irritated shuffling, loo trips anticipated and fags craved.

Ultimately, I wasn’t dazzled, as the billing promised, by the well-known show tunes of a much loved musical, I was more impressed by its relative success.