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The great composer Richard Rodgers was justifiably proud of South Pacific before it opened on Broadway in 1949. In one of those late-night tinkering and cutting sessions without which no new musical sees the light of day, he cheerfully announced: "Fellers, the show is perfect. Let's go to bed."
More than half a century on, South Pacific doesn't seem quite so perfect inTrevor Nunn's handsome new staging at the National's Olivier. There is no disguising the fact that in this Rodgers and Hammerstein show, honest sentiment sometimes curdles into sickly sentimentality, nor that the plot sometimes plods.
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The golden-voiced Philip Quast is splendidly debonair as the object of her affections, Emile de Becque, and there is a real chemistry between the two of them.
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