David Pittsinger and Carmen Cusack in South Pacific.

When heading to the theater to see a musical, you might, if you’re lucky, get treated to one genuinely tear-jerking, show-stopping ballad. In South Pacific, you get two.

When David Pittsinger, as the noble, dashing Frenchborn Emile de Becque, delivers such gems as the achingly romantic “Some Enchanted Evening” and the gut-wrenching “This Nearly Was Mine”, South Pacific, currently stopping at Kennedy Center, is truly transporting. The Rodgers & Hammerstein classic has a gorgeous score (brought to life here by a powerful pit orchestra), and is a sharp indictment of racism, set in wartime. While South Pacific hits you over the head with its message of tolerance (“You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught” is a scathing credo of how prejudice is learned, not ingrained), it’s a message that, sadly, still rings relevant more than half a century after its debut.

Given the work’s longevity, there are times when South Pacific feels dated, whether it be through the problematic, Miss Saigon-invoking subplot romance between Lt. Joseph Cable and the island native Liat (who is handed to him, basically on a platter, by her mother, the enigmatic Bloody Mary), or through some of the show’s more old fashioned lyrics, on display in such songs as the ingenue Nellie Forbush’s (Carmen Cusack) winning “Cockeyed Optimist”: “I could say life was just a bowl of jello”…you get the idea.