‘I do get asked about airplanes—a lot!”

Linda Dunn, who is directing

South Pacific for the 101st annual Mountain Play—on Marin County’s Mt. Tamalpais—laughs loudly and warmly when the airplane question is brought up. The last time South Pacific was staged in the massive, 3,000-seat Cushing Amphitheater, a now-legendary production, it included a thrilling fly-over by a squadron of WWII-era planes. So of course, with South Pacific returning to the mountain, that’s what everybody, it seems, wants to know: Will there be airplanes?

“What I tell everyone,” Dunn replies cagily, “is, ‘You’ll just have to come and see, won’t you?'”

Beneath the planes-or-no-planes question is another. How does a director avoid disappointing audience members who fondly remember a previous production without repeating what was done before?

“I think,” Dunn replies, “when something is really good about a production, you certainly can decide to keep it—but you have to bring a fresh approach to it. The way I approach South Pacific is quite a bit different. My idea is to move the show from the Broadway stage into more of a living history context.”

Using the massive canvas available to her in such an enormous setting, Dunn has created a working, fully populated military installation, in which the action of the play will take place amid all the day-to-day activity that really would have been going on in such an environment.

“The set is very open,” she says. “There’s always something happening around the edges. It’s been a wonderful challenge for the actors.”

South Pacific is Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1949 adaptation of James Michener’s bestselling Tales of the South Pacific. The play was a huge success when it first appeared, despite the rather enormous risks the playwrights took in adapting Michener’s book. The play confronts racism directly, and has a less than reverent view of the way military bases operated during the Great War.

But that realism touched people, and years later, the story of nurses and marines on an island base in the Pacific can still pack a wallop. And packed with recognizable tunes, the musical also still gets audiences humming along.

Dunn’s cast, a mix of Mountain Play regulars and a number of first-timers, includes Taylor Chalker as nurse Nellie Forbush, Randy Nazarian as the comically scheming petty officer Luther Billis, Tyler Costin as the lovestruck Lt. Cable, Mia Klenk
as Liat, the focus of Cable’s attentions, and Peter Vilkin as Emile, the expatriate Frenchman who catches Nellie’s eye.

“Oh, and we’ve also got Jim Dunn as Captain Bracket,” says Dunn. “There’s an interesting little twist.”

Jim Dunn, it should be noted, is not only the ex-husband of Linda, but until 2013 was the artistic director of the Mountain Play. For the previous 30 years, he personally helmed all of the Mountain Plays, including two of those legendary productions of South Pacific.

Linda Dunn is only the second woman to direct a Mountain Play. She follows Michelle Swanson, who directed A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum a whopping 36 years ago.

“I hope,” she says, “after this year, that all changes. There’s no reason a lot more women shouldn’t get the chance to work up there.”

Mother Jones. That name, if it’s recognized at all these days, is best known for the left-leaning magazine that bears it.

But Mother Jones—the sobriquet of Irish-American union activist Mary Harris Jones—was once a household name, alternately praised and vilified for her lifetime commitment to workers’ rights in the factories and mines of America.

Those causes, and more, are the primary focus of a rousing new play by folksinger-playwright Si Kahn. In Mother Jones in Heaven, running through May 18 at Main Stage West, Kahn has accomplished two notable things: giving voice to this somewhat forgotten historical figure, and crafting the perfect vehicle for actor-singer Mary Gannon Graham. As Mother Jones, Graham is sensational, adding another indelible character to a growing list (Patsy Cline, Shirley Valentine) that the Sebastopol actress has claimed as her own in recent years.

Set in a whiskey bar somewhere in the clouds of paradise, the play begins with Mother Jones expressing surprise at having ended up in heaven. She’s worried that she might be lonely without all her old activist friends, who’d spent their lives being told they were headed straight for hell.

Not only does Mother Jones have company, she gets free whiskey and beer whenever she wants it, and a full-on Irish folk band (led by Jim Peterson) to back her up whenever she feels like bursting into song. For Mother Jones, Kahn has written a dozen or so original songs (maybe two more than necessary), nicely underscoring Jones’ emotional life with words and music ranging from the playful and sweet to the heartbroken and angry.

The show unfolds as a series of loosely connected stories from Jones’ life. Especially powerful is her story of losing her husband and four children to yellow fever. That loss was an overwhelming source of grief, which fueled Mary Jones’ passion for sticking up for the poor, the hard-hit and the underserved. Graham relates this and other tales with a skill and emotional honesty that is at times utterly breathtaking.

Directed by Beth Craven with sensitivity and some strategically placed whimsy, Mother Jones in Heaven has very little actual plot, but plenty of power. Before it’s over, audiences might find themselves longing for the Great Beyond themselves, just so they could seek out this legend and share a whiskey or two with her.

Rating (out of 5): ★★★★½