Reviving James Michener: The Relevance of South Pacific

Fifty-nine years after its Broadway debut, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's South Pacific is once again drawing applause. At this year's Tony Award ceremony, it topped all musicals, winning seven awards. But the most serious praise for New York City's Lincoln Center revival stems from the way it deals with race.

The praise is well deserved for a play that in 1949 was far ahead of its time, but critics have failed to give sufficient credit to the person most responsible for the intelligence behind South Pacific—James Michener, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 Tales of the South Pacific provided Rodgers and Hammerstein with their story.