South Pacific

The Aspen High School performed the musical South Pacific March 5th, 6th and 7th. It was very well done and the students had a good time. Which is kinda the point with a high school musical.

The kids also worked very hard with almost constant rehearsals and set building sessions. The staging was minimalist and effective, giving the audience a sense of place without overwhelming the stage or the production.

The musical itself deals with some fairly adult themes of war, racism, death and, of course, romance. I did find it a hallmark of its era that both of the interracial couples ended in death. More of the tragic mulatto.

Adding a bit more drama to the drama was the fact that a bomb threat was discovered at the Aspen High School at 4 pm on Thursday, opening night. The handwritten threat scrawled on the wall of a boys' bathroom claimed that the school would be blown up on Friday, March 6th. The school board and the superintendent allowed Thursday's opening night performance to proceed as planned but elected to close the entire school campus (high, middle and elementary schools) on Friday. At the end of Thursday night's performance as the news spread through the audience (via emails received on PDAs), there was some grumbling about the fact that the performance, which took place in the elementary school, not the high school, was allowed to continue. I think the whole thing was handled appropriately. Balancing the probability of the threat with the repercussions of canceling the performance was the reasonable course of action. Bomb sniffing dogs on Friday found nothing more in the high school than a starter pistol in the athletic department. And supposedly there are several leads on the perpetrator.