LCT's South Pacific Set for Broadway Run in Spring of '08

According to Variety, the previously announced Broadway revival of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic South Pacific will be presented on Broadway in spring of 2008.

Andre Bishop, the artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater, revealed in an interview that South Pacific -directed by Tony Award-nominee Bartlett Sher (The Light in the Piazza, Awake and Sing!) - will play the Vivian Beaumont Theatre the year after next. 

Casting has not yet been announced for the revival of the musical, which concerns the love affairs of two couples who are living on a Polynesian island during World War II. Both romances - those of Nellie Forbush and older Frenchman Emile de Becque, and Lieutenant Joe Cable and Liat - are threatened by racism and misunderstanding.

South Pacific, which is based on James Michener's Tales of the South Pacific, starred Mary Martin as Nellie and Ezio Pinza as Emile when it opened at the Majestic Theatre on April 7th, 1949. Rodgers and Hammerstein's second-longest running show at 1,925 performances, it won all of its 9 Tony nominations in 1950, including Best Musical.

A number of its songs, such as "This Nearly was Mine," "Bali Ha'i," "Younger than Springtime," and "Some Enchanted Evening," have become worldwide standards thanks to the musical's success. Along with the many Tony Awards, Rodgers and Hammerstein, along with co-writer Joshua Logan, also won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1950.

Lincoln Center Theater is currently presenting Tom Stoppard's three-part epic The Coast of Utopia.  Bishop also stated that after Utopia ends its run next year, LCT will present "a very, very small play" in fall of 2007.