Entertaining but Dated

Having left his homeland under a cloud, the leading man is now exploiting Third World workers. The leading lady and juvenile lead are bigots. The comic leads take advantage of anybody they can; one of them fools a naive sailor into marrying her daughter. Add a few tunes, and voila! “South Pacific” won a Pulitzer Prize and became one of America’s most enduring musicals.

The Cabrillo Music Theatre is presenting the fourth “South Pacific” production in its 30-year history. If you can ignore the characters’ insensitivities (most of them never repent their shortcomings), it’s a reasonably entertaining production.

Stephanie Block is engaging as Ensign Nellie Forbush, a Navy nurse who would marry plantation owner Emile de Becque (James Anest) if only he hadn’t sullied himself by marrying and siring two children by a Polynesian woman (now dead).

Steve Scott Springer plays Lt. Joseph Cable, lured into sleeping with the daughter (Cecilia Nocum) of local entrepreneur Bloody Mary (Asuncion Deiparine Liebe). He’d marry her, if only she weren’t so darned, well, foreign. And Joseph Bearss co-stars as Luther Billis, a noncom specializing in shady dealings.

The action is occasionally clunky under Mark Madama’s direction, and there are a few odd line readings--as if the actors didn’t know what they were talking about. But the singing (musical director Diann Alexander) and dancing (choreographer Lee Martino) are worthy, and of course there are those Rodgers and Hammerstein songs, including “Some Enchanted Evening” and “There Is Nothin’ Like a Dame.”

* “South Pacific” continues at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, ends 2 p.m. Sunday at Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza Auditorium, 2100 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd. Tickets are $18.50-$28.50 at Civic Arts Center box office, or through Ticketmaster at 480-3232. For information or sales to groups of 12 or more, call 497-8616.

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Whimsical Story: The peripatetic Ojai Civic Light Opera has settled into its own theater, right off Ojai’s main drag. It’s a storefront, where the production of “The Fantasticks,” with six actors, still manages to be in the audience’s laps.

Jeremy Davison and Beverly Jones are featured as The Boy and The Girl. Their fathers, played by Mark Wingland and director Wayne Pickerell, detest one another and have built a wall to separate their adjacent homes and the children. Or do they and have they? There is some confusion. But the play’s whimsical charms overcome poor storytelling and careless songwriting. This simple fable, after all, remains the world’s longest-running musical, still playing off-Broadway.

Jones is terrific--wistfulness personified--and Pickerell and Wingland are very funny. Joshua Kranz could camp it up even more as the flamboyant “El Gallo” and Tami Park-Sherbo is effective as a mime.

* “The Fantasticks” continues at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through Nov. 23 at Ojai Civic Light Opera, 209 N. Montgomery St. Tickets are $15.95. For reservations, call 646-1899.

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Unfamiliar but Funny: Certainly the funniest of the three shows reviewed this week is the least familiar, and thus the one people may be least inclined to see: Gothic Productions’s performance of “Cat Among the Pigeons,” a venerable French farce by Georges Feydeau.

Lucette (Toni Frisk) still has eyes for her former lover, Fernand (Roscoe Gaines), who--unbeknownst to her--is scheduled to marry Viviane (Pamela Canton), daughter of the Baroness (Jocelyn Couret). High jinks, need we add, ensue, complete with mistaken identities. Most of the 14 actors are terrific under the direction of Michael Jordan. It’s all very silly, and well worth seeing. Key line: “You’re marrying your lover? Then what will you do with your afternoons?”

* “Cat Among the Pigeons” continues at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 7 p.m. Sundays through Nov. 23 at the Arts Council Center, 284 Greenmeadow Road (off Moorpark) in Thousand Oaks. Tickets are $10; $8, students and seniors. For reservations, call 381-2747.