The King, dealing as it does with the comic side of misogyny and the clash of alien cultures, could be deemed in some circles to be out of joint with the times.
BUT get past this 1950’s American view of the world, and the show could not be more appropriate for our times in 2018.
An all-powerful ruler, disrespectful of women, and indeed the views of anyone with whom he disagrees, feels threatened by forces outside his empire. His answer ? He thinks of building a wall to keep the world at bay. Sound familiar ?
But before I carry the Trump-alike idea too far, this is essentially a gloriously energetic and tune-filled three hours in the theatre, with some towering performances.
The King will be forever associated with Yul Brynner who made the part his own for decades, and indeed there have been few revivals. But Japanese actor Ken Watanabe brings a brooding, sulky side to the character and he elicits every single laugh he can from his wily stubbornness and awkward use of the English language.
In his terribly difficult patter song A Puzzlement, he often fails to get the words across, but he has a visceral energy that lights up his every scene.
Kelli O’Hara has an operatic purity to die for, and she plays the English school mistress much as I imagine Julie Andrews might have done, given the opportunity. She has a subtlety of tone that is thrilling and her gentlest of beginnings to the showstopper Shall We Dance is absolutely enchanting. In Hello Young Lovers she is effortlessly beautiful.
Enchanting too are the host of Siamese children – just a few of the King’s many offspring, who each is given a character and each of which in their big numbers creates comedy of their own making.
As the doomed young lovers, Na-Young Jean and Dean John-Wilson, have an electrifying chemistry in that haunting duet We Kiss in a Shadow and later in the show in the beautifully rendered I have Dreamed.
Nabokov Mori is mesmerising as the crafty lead wife the Lady Thiang, and sings Something Wonderful from the heart and not the head. And returning to the Trump parallels she tells Anna “King cannot take advice. It must not sound like advice.”
The King concedes Anna is a “very difficult woman” and admits he doesn’t really know how to deal with that novel situation. In this relationship there is much humour but also a warmth of spirit. The impossibility of their love being realised is the second doomed affair in the show.
But all in all it’s Rodgers and Hammerstein’s block-buster musical numbers that make this a truly memorable evening on the London stage 2018.
The King and I is playing at the Palladium Theatre, London
Review by Brian Butler
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