Theatre in review: South Pacific, Anna X and ‘country-comedy’ opera L’amico Fritz

Just to see ‘a large cast dancing and singing its lungs out feels like witnessing an act of rebirth’

Clockwise from top left: Anna X, South Pacific and L’amico Fritz
Clockwise from top left: Anna X, South Pacific and L’amico Fritz

“My, how I’ve missed the gladdening sight and pulse-quickening sound of a major American musical done to perfection,” said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph.

Daniel Evans’s “enchanting” and “seductive” staging of South Pacific at Chichester Festival Theatre is a flat-out triumph. Leads Julian Ovenden and Gina Beck are both first-rate. The racial aspects of the plot are handled very sensitively, and without sacrificing wit and buoyancy. And just to see “a large cast dancing and singing its lungs out feels like witnessing an act of rebirth”.

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