MARTYN Knight's musical will have its place in York Theatre Royal's history as the last full-scale production before work starts on the £4.1 million redevelopment of the theatre. Fittingly, it goes out on a Bali Hai note.

As chance would have it, it is also the second show in a row at the Theatre Royal where you will hear There Is Nothin' Like A Dame, after Dame Berwick Kaler's grand entry to the Rodgers and Hammerstein number at each pantomime performance.

South Pacific is packed with familiar show-stoppers, from Some Enchanted Evening to Happy Talk and it is for this reason that the show abides when the racism within the storyline makes it a "problem" play in the manner of Shakespeare's The Merchant Of Venice.

You can't hide from the prevailing attitudes in the piece: whereas the songs are "timeless", you hope the racism in the sardonic You've Got To Be Carefully Taught is not, although it has become a hot topic again with the rise in anti-Semitism in Britain and Europe and the taunting behaviour of a group of Chelsea fans on the Paris Metro.

In such circumstances, you have to play the story and its frank questions around the subject of race and appearance honestly and truthfully, and that is what director/choreographer Martyn Knight, lead actress Rachael Wilkinson's Ensign Nellie Forbush and Scott Concalves' Lieutenant Joseph Cable all do.

Based on James A Michener’s novel Tales Of The South Pacific, the story is set in and around an American military base on a New Hebridean island during the Second World War.

Wilkinson's Ensign Nellie Forbush, a nurse who has fallen in love with Richard Blackburn's French planter Emile de Becque, has serious reservations about his two Eurasian children, while Lt Joseph Cable (a role shared by Concalves and Christian Mortimer) wonders how he can take an oriental wife home to the United States.

Rodgers and Hammerstein confront these problems in a measured manner, tactfully and not with a heavy hand, in a musical that has its serious undertow but is suffused with humour too.

Wilkinson and Blackburn make for romantic leads, dealing with the complexities of an adult relationship between lovers of different ages and cultures (Emile killed a man in his younger days) and both are in tremendous voice.

Wilkinson's rendition of Honey Bun is the show's best number while Blackburn's baritone graces both Some Enchanted Evening and in particular the fiery This Nearly Was Mine.

Knight's ensemble choreography is fabulous, whether for the swaggering Seabees of the US Navy having great fun with There Is Nothin' Like A Dame or the ladies chorus having a riot in beachwear with I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair.

Not for the first time, Rosy Rowley steals scenes aplenty on a York stage, this time in the boldly comic part of Bloody Mary, while Concalves impresses as Cable and Richard Hawley grows into his role as Luther Billis.

Praise too for Phil Redding's 14-piece orchestra, whose playing is as hot as the island setting.

South Pacific, York Light, York Theatre Royal, until March 14. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk