South Pacific is a riot

Nothing like a dame: Lauren Kennedy and Nick Holder

By BBC News Online's Jackie Finlay

Trevor Nunn's follow-up to My Fair Lady, a revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's 40s classic musical South Pacific, has been widely anticipated.

Another lavish musical, another production with more than an eye to the National's box office.

The question - apart from whether the National should be staging such shows - has been whether the show would repeat My Fair Lady's runaway success.

On first glance, the answer is it could well do - Nunn has teamed up again with Matthew Bourne as choreographer to produce a show of enormous energy and fun, with a good ensemble cast and a beautiful set.

Central relationship does not quite ring true

The sexual frustration of the US army boys and girls stationed on a remote island in World War II shines through in the marvellously physical crowd numbers, Nothing Like A Dame and Wash That Man Right Out Of my Hair.

Meanwhile the show's more serious themes - racism, inequality and the inhumanity of war - work well for a 21st Century audience.

Nunn makes a serious attempt to deal with these sensitively, and uses the set to make his points for him - as the show opens, the serenity of the island is destroyed by exercising soldiers.

The production also makes the most throughout of a jeep and anti-aircraft gun that should really have programme billing, the number of appearances they make.

Charm

The racial prejudice of the two central characters, Lieutenant Joe Cable and Ensign Nellie Forbush, is tackled head-on, using the audience's loss of sympathy for the characters as a dramatic force.

We are kept hooked as Joe is destroyed by confrontation with his inner self, while Nellie, in her own crisis, finds strength and a second chance for happiness.

But this darker element plays second fiddle to the show's joie de vivre and sometimes feels rushedin favour of of the big numbers.

Of course, there is no Martine McCutcheon to grab the headlines.

Wash that man: Ensemble pieces are enormous fun

But Lauren Kennedy as Nellie has undoubted charm and a great voice, which could be exploited even further.

She would benefit from a stronger stage presence to carry solo scenes, but hopefully that will come.

Her beau, Philip Quast as the mysterious Frenchman Emile de Becque, also uses his superb voice to great effect and lends the production a serious mien, despite an accent which seems at times borrowed from 'Allo 'Allo.

Their relationship never quite convinces, however, and their scenes appear pallid compared to the big numbers.

Sheila Francisco is excellent - perhaps the best in the show - as a larger than life Bloody Mary, the island trader who becomes closely involved in the characters' lives.

And Nick Holder as clowning SeaBee Luther Billis is another, literally, oversized creation who enjoys taking every chance he can to steal the scene.

Edward Baker-Duly as the doomed Lieutenant Joe Cable gives a sensitive portrayal as the all-American boy from Princeton who ends up destroyed by the islands.

Overall, this is another cracking show, with its few flaws unlikely to stop anyone having a great night out.

South Pacific is on at the National Theatre in London.