The King and I is up there amongst the very best of the Rogers and Hammerstein musicals and even musicals in general, and why not with its wonderful score, the lovely “I have Dreamed” and the delightful “Shall We Dance” amongst them.
In addition, it boasts an abundance of love stories, historical context, social commentary, a host of beyond-cute children and a quasi-romcom plot of headstrong East clashes with headstrong West with the inevitable happy ending. Well sort of; uplifting ending anyway.
The production now landed back in London has a cast led by the charming Helen George, long cemented into television viewers’ hearts as Call the Midwife’s Trixie Franklin.
George, reprising the role, seems born into a hoop skirt, elegantly and effortlessly singing the heart out of Anna, the warm on the inside, prim on the outside Victorian governess who arrives at the court of the King of Siam (Thailand) to teach his many children and multiple wives.
The role of King Mongkut in the original 1951 production catapulted the little-known Yul Brynner to stardom, and he continued to play the part on and off across many decades.
Strutting about—and out of the shadow cast by Brynner—as the self-important and magisterial Mongkut is American Darren Lee, who has been touring the US and the UK in the role and wears his imperiousness comfortably.
The sizeable stage of the Dominion Theatre is populated by a generously numbered ensemble all dressed in colourful and embellished costumes. They are at least very attractive and at best visually stunning, but the costumes cannot make up for the teasing set design that promises much with the opening scene—an impressive boat on which Anna arrives in Siam—but then disappointingly delivers nothing else remotely in the same league.
The supporting cast suffer no such weakness, benefitting from the strong stage presence of Cezarah Bonner who, as most favoured wife Lady Thiang, exudes such dignity and, like the rebellious Burmese slave girl Tuptim (Marienella Philllips), is notably well-sung.
Vocal prowess, however, does not overcome director Bartlett Sher and choreographer Christopher Gattelli’s puritanical approach to Tuptim’s duets with her forbidden lover Lun Tha (Dean John-Wilson), leaving their secret meetings for “We Kiss in a Shadow” and “I Have Dreamed” drained of sexual tension. The greater disservice though is to the story, since it fails to draw a parallel between the genuine love and passion between them and the love driven by obedience and devotion to service that the King’s wives have for Mongkut.
Sher’s direction more generally is also dull; the characters mostly present their lines and songs centre stage and facing front as if they cannot connect with the audience unless looking straight at them, undermining what they are saying and stretching both credulity and patience in a show that runs for just shy of three hours.
There are those who will say, with some reason, that these remarks are trivial in light of the show’s much more far reaching challenges, some even arguing that The King and I should be retired from the repertoire, whilst others contend that a show written seven decades ago should not be observed through a prism tinted by contemporary sensibilities.
Neither side is wrong.
Historical inaccuracy is a necessary evil, and were artistic licence a hanging offence, there would be many a dead playwright and book writer. The issue with The King and I however goes much deeper than whether King Mongkut has the right number of wives.
Certain facts are now known and uncontested. The ‘real’ Anglo-Indian Anna Leonowens was a self-made reinvention who hid her mixed cultural heritage and whose memoires are now regarded as fanciful if not actual fiction, particularly as rewritten in the 20th century by Margaret Landon. So offensively do their writings misrepresent King Mongkut that they and their adaptations were banned in Thailand.
The song of the wives “Western People Funny” does nothing to rebalance a condescending premise that underlies the entire story, which is that West equals civilisation and the East must succumb to its values in order to be taken seriously.
Whilst the pluckiness of Anna says something about equality, it is largely drowned out by the racist undertones and dark threads of sanctioned misogyny that run through the narrative, with Tuptim being gifted as a courtesan to the King having a particularly foul miasma of trafficking about it, the Tuptim-Lun Tha subplot serving only to elevate Anna to the moral high ground at the cost of diminishing the King to “barbarian”.
If I quote Hammerstein and say “it’s a puzzlement”, it is not to underplay or disrespect the very real issues that make this show so troublesome.
I don’t have any easy answers—to make The King and I inoffensive would require not just some judicious cutting but an evisceration, a hybrid output that succeeds in embracing the worthy score and songs within a largely rewritten book; an homage perhaps, but a different show nonetheless. It’s a possibility, but there is a square to be circled here when so many other classics don’t face the same fate.
One answer is awareness; not to enjoy the show lazily but with our eyes and ears open, and our brains alert lest we see and hear complicitly—to be conscious and vocal about its failings but also of its musical virtues.