Reba McEntire including "The New York Times", which commented, "Without qualification the best performance by an actress in a musical comedy this season." McEntire personally called the musical, "some of the hardest work I've ever done in my life". In 2005, McEntire starred as Nellie Forbush in the Carnegie Hall concert production of the Broadway musical "South Pacific" with Alec Baldwin as Luther Billis and Brian Stokes Mitchell as Emile de Becque, directed by Walter Bobbie and with an adapted script by David Ives. The concert was broadcast as part of the "Great Performances" series in 2006. In October 2001, McEntire premiered
Nellie the Elephant minute. Singing the chorus of the song twice, with a compression on each beat, results in exactly 30 compressions, which is the international standard for CPR. The use of "Nellie" resulted in correct timing for 42 out of 130 cases, as compared with 15 for no music and just 12 for "That's the Way (I Like It)". However the depth of compression was found to be inadequate in most of those cases, and the use of "Nellie" was found to increase this inadequacy slightly, as compared with the use of no music (56% too shallow with "Nellie" and 47% without).