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"When important things happen", we're told midway through the very long first act of Trevor Nunn's new London revival of South Pacific, "one has a feeling about it". My initial feeling about the Royal National Theater's third and latest Rodger and Hammerstein reclamation is that it doesn't equal the company's Carousel and Oklahoma!. That's to set, admittedly, a formidably high bar for an occasion whose importance (even, it has to be said, self-importance) is never in doubt: Nunn has done his homework, and buffs everywhere will thrill at, among other things, the chance to hear forgotten numbers like 'Now is the Time' and 'My Girl Back Home' (both dropped prior to the 1949 Broadway preem), not to mention the presence via Matthew Bourne of the most celebrated choreographer this musical has yet enjoyed (the Joshua Logan-directed original didn't even have one).
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