BWW Interviews: SOUTH PACIFIC's 'Cable' Anderson Davis

According to the Rodgers and Hammerstein Theatricals History, when the very first national tour of South Pacific played Atlanta's Tower Theatre in February 1953, the Georgia state legislature issued a vehement protest, mainly in response to the song "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught". When the award winning Broadway revival of this classic musical plays Atlanta's Fox Theatre April 6 – 11, the reception should be much different. Singing that haunting song and playing the role of Lt. Joseph Cable will be Anderson Davis. I caught up with Anderson recently and had a chat about his career, his character and the show.

Hi, Anderson! How are you?

I am good, just hanging out here in Fayetteville, AK.

BWW: Anderson, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me today. I am excited to hear about the show and I know our readers will be too. We are really looking forward to South Pacific in Atlanta!

Me too!

Let's start by having you tell us a little bit about yourself and your career. Specifically, how did you get into the theatre business??

I was always a musician growing up, I played the oboe pretty much my entire childhood. My family were always musicians, so I thought I was going to do that with my life. I took private lessons and did a lot of orchestra and then I got to play in the pit for a couple of shows when I was in High School and got my first exposure to theatre that way. I wasn't one of those theatre kids who started really young. I didn't really sing in front of anyone until I was about 17 or so. So after I got my first exposure looking out from the pit, I went an auditioned for my first high school play. For college, I had auditioned for a lot of schools for oboe (classical performance) and one school for theatre and sort of last minute surprised my parents by telling them that after all that money and time into the oboe, I would rather do theatre. So I convinced them, and ended up at Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh for theatre. I spent four years of my undergrad doing that and working at the summer stock theatre there, the Pittsburgh CLO. And through college showcase, I got signed with my first agent in 2006 and I have been doing it ever since.

So Is this your first experience with South Pacific? Were you a fan of the show before the tour?

Well, it is, except for the fact that one of the shows I did in high school happened to be South Pacific. I played Emile DuBec, and that was really my only exposure to the show to this point. It is sort of bizarre. My parents think it is hilarious because they remember going to see me for the first time in this show and it has come full circle now.

And this show will not be your first time on stage at the Fox, right? You were part of High School Musical 2 a little while back?

That's right. I was also in a recent production of Les Miserables that came through the Fox. The most recent tour that went out of Les Miz, I played Marius in that. Then I came back, almost immediately after and was cast in two back to back shows with Theater of the Stars, so I am excited to come back. We have played a lot of cities, so you end up looking forward to cities that you have been to so I have been looking at the calendar knowing that I was going to come to Atlanta and getting excited.

South Pacific is a timeless story that has been around for many years. What do you think it is about the show that brings people back to the theatre whenever it is playing?

I think one of the major things is that a lot of people think they have seen it enough, maybe they saw some regional production or smaller tour, and I think it is easy for people to forget that this is the very first revival of the show ever, the first time in 60 years. It hadn't been revived on Broadway ever. Which is sort of insane because pretty much any musical that they think could be successful on Broadway they will revive it.  So, I think, for whatever reason the R&H foundation were very cautious with this one because if they were going to put it back on Broadway they wanted it to be a big success. So they put it in the right hands, in the hands of Lincoln Center and Bartlett Sher and it was an incredible success. I think the reason why the show is still so popular is because it is strangely still relevant. When I sing "You've Got to be Carefully Taught", you can apply that song and those words to our lives today and they are so relevant, whether it is racism or the war. Put on top of the fact that it has an incredibly relevant story all of these famous songs, "Wash that Man", "Nothing like a Dame" , and "Some Enchanted Evening" and all these parents of kids who don't have exposure to the show seem to be excited to have the opportunity to bring their kids or grandkids. It seems to be the kind of show that brings several generations together.

You play Joseph Cable, an optimistic, yet conflicted character. Do you find yourself connecting with him in any way on a personal level?

Absolutely, yeah. One of the things that Bart, our director, really laid into us about was the research. Some people may think, you are doing a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, it is fluffy and airy and light-hearted, but in order for the show to feel good at all, you have to understand the reality of where these characters are coming from. So I did a lot of research watching documentaries and watching the movies of that time period, and of course there is an inifinite amount of information on WWII, but specifically the Pacific side. Actually, HBO just came out with this brand new series, The Pacific, all about WWII on the Pacific side. What is amazing about it is that it is set in the Guadalcanal fight which is what Joe Cable is coming straight from. So just to see these pictures and really put yourself in the position of these kids is amazing. Joe Cable is probably exactly my age, a guy who graduated from Princeton and is in his late 20's. He gets ripped out of his hometown in Philadelphia and is transported to this island that he probably doesn't even know how to say the name of and he gets thrown into this insane war and then he gets this assignment to try and convince this French planter to help him out. So, knowing all this back story I think is really important to connect to the character. It was really important to me and also to Bart to really be honest about where he probably came from.

What part of playing this role do you like the most? What do you look forward to the most each night?

The very first thing is putting on the costume. Cathy Zuber is an incredibly talented Broadway costume designer. She has given me (and Matthew Morrison before me) this incredible costume. He has this leather jacket and big boots and the gun and knife and aviator glasses, and you have all this gear, so just putting it all on really transports you pretty quickly and literally to another time. So I always look forward to putting on the costume. Other than that there are a lot of other parts. Having the opportunity to sing one the most famous songs in the musical theatre repertoire, "Younger than Springtime" is incredible. So many people know the song and more than just singing a popular song, it is fun to try to make it feel fresh and feel like it is being sung for the first time. And really try and remember that this is something that no one had heard before when they first did it on Broadway. So it is fun to try and do that every night.

With the tour, you are constantly on the road from city to city, what would you say is the hardest part of that life?

Yeah, it is very difficult. This is my very first national tour experience and its hard. There are lots of rewarding aspects of course, but as far as the challenge, living out of a hotel can get kind of Groundhog Day-like. You have the feeling like you have done this before.  Little things can be annoying too like having to unpack, and also you miss your friends and that feeling of home where you can stretch out. Sometimes it feels like you can't really develop things outside the show. Whether it is relationships or music, etc. I told myself when I was going on tour that this would be the perfect time to really have time on my own to focus and write music and do all these things I want to do. I didn't realize how hard that would be because I am constantly moving.

So you write your own music?

Yeah, I do, I travel with a laptop and nowadays they have such great equipment for personal recording. I am actually trying to teach myself the banjo and I have a guitar that I have played for many years. There are other musicians on tour so a couple times we have gotten together and done a little jam session in the hotel room. It makes it feel like you are doing something other than just the show over and over again.

So thinking toward the future, do you have a dream role that you would one day like to play?

You know, I get asked this question a lot and of course, there are shows I have always loved, but more than anything, my dream role is to be part of something new. What I really want to do more than anything is be a part of a show that has never been done before. It is so rare. I am in a revival right now, so even if you were Matt Morrison who was in the original revival at Lincoln Center, someone has done it before. So it is very rare in the business of revivals, and replacements, regional productions, it is very rare to be a part of something that is brand new. But Bartlett Sher did a show called The Light in the Piazza at Lincoln Center and I saw that show in New York and the writer of the music was Adam Guettel. If there was ever a person I would most want to work with in the musical theatre business it would most certainly be him and with Bart because the two of them together, I can't imagine what that would be like. I hope I will have the chance one day to work with both of them.

Anderson, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today. Is there anything else you would like to share with the readers?

Only that we are all really looking forward to coming to Atlanta!

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