Morrison and Burstein Join South Pacific Cast at Lincoln Center

By Kenneth Jones
10 Dec 2007

Matthew Morrison and Danny Burstein join the cast of South Pacific.
Matthew Morrison and Danny Burstein join the cast of South Pacific.

Matthew Morrison, who was famously lovestruck in a cross-cultural relationship in Lincoln Center Theater's The Light in the Piazza, earning a Tony Award nomination, will be at it again at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. He'll play Lt. Cable there in the musical South Pacific in 2008.

Piazza director Bartlett Sher has cast Morrison as the young Philadelphia officer who falls for an innocent island girl named Liat during World War II.

Also announced on Dec. 10 was Danny Burstein, a Tony nominee for playing Adolpho in The Drowsy Chaperone, who will play Luther Billis, a frisky Seabee who tangles with Bloody Mary (played by the previously announced Loretta Ables Sayre).

The featured players join previously announced Kelli O'Hara as Nellie Forbush and Paulo Szot as Emile de Becque.

The new production of the groundbreaking, Pulitzer-honored South Pacific — by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II and LCT-billed as Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific — will begin March 1, 2008, and open April 3 at the Vivian Beaumont.

Additional casting for the production, which will feature a cast of 40, will be announced at a later date. Lincoln Center Theater acknowledges that Szot will appear in Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific with the permission of Actors' Equity Association.

South Pacific has music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a book by Oscar Hammerstein II and Joshua Logan. It's adapted from the Pulitzer Prize winning novel "Tales of the South Pacific" by James A. Michener.

The Lincoln Center Theater production will have musical staging by Christopher Gattelli, sets by Michael Yeargan, costumes by Catherine Zuber, lighting by Donald Holder, sound by Scott Lehrer and musical direction by Ted Sperling, conducting a 30-piece orchestra performing the musical's original orchestrations by Robert Russell Bennett and dance and incidental music arrangements by Trude Rittman

Tickets are available now at the Lincoln Center Theater box office (150 West 65 Street), at Telecharge.com or by visiting www.lct.org.