SOUTH PACIFIC Headed to the UK?

Head of the Ambassador Theatre Group, Harold Panter told reporters at the Guardian today that he plans to bring the wildly successful Lincoln Centre production of Roger & Hammerstein's SOUTH PACIFIC to the West End.  

"We are going to be bringing over the Lincoln Centre's wonderful production of South Pacific - extraordinary moving piece of work, basically about men at war," Panter said.  

"Mr Hammerstein and Mr Rodgers knew a thing or two about creating wonderful music, yes, but the core of it is that it is about something."

Rodgers & Hammerstein's SOUTH PACIFIC swept the 2008 Tony Awards, winning seven honors including Best Musical Revival and Best Director for Bartlett Sher. The new production created a sold-out sensation on Broadway, lauded by the critics as "Simply Wonderful! Beguiling Theatrical Magic!" (New York Post), "Ravishing and Overwhelming" (Variety) and "Rapturous and Revelatory!" (The New York Times). The Lincoln Center Theater production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's SOUTH PACIFIC endded its record-breaking run on Broadway at the Vivian Beaumont Theater on August 22, 2010.

Based on James Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning book 'Tales of the South Pacific,' Rodgers &
Hammerstein's SOUTH PACIFIC has music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a book by Oscar Hammerstein II and Joshua Logan.

The musical is set on a tropical island during World War II and tells the sweeping romantic story of two couples- U.S. Navy nurse Nellie Forbush and French plantation owner Emile de Becque and Navy Airman Joe Cable and a young local native girl Liat - and how their happiness is threatened by the realities of war and by their own prejudices. The score's songs include such classics as "Some Enchanted Evening," "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair," "Younger Than Springtime," "Bali Ha'i," "There is Nothin' Like A Dame," "This Nearly Was Mine" and "A Wonderful Guy."

Photo Credit: BWW-Staff