This soundtrack got a lot of play during my childhoodWith Tony season fast approaching, it's time to revive our stage column and try to hit the shows that might be competing this year. But we'll start with a throwback to last season, the revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein's The King and I which most everyone knows from its 1956 big screen adaptation which won 5 Oscars (albeit in a weird Academy year) and hopefully not from that 1999 Jodie Foster movie Anna and the King.
For those who aren't well versed in Broadway mechanics there's generally a few weeks of performances called "previews" wherein shows are technically not "open" and yet they're playing every night as they approach opening night. It's the easiest time to get tickets to almost anything so if you miss the previews good luck! Other avid theatergoers might have a different take but I've found that as a general rule it's best to see stage shows late in previews through, oh, four months into the initial run. You're late enough that the actors have fine tuned their work and you're early enough that no one on stage is phoning it after having done it 8 times a week for months on end. Sometimes, though, a show is so popular and expensive that you give up trying to see it. This was the case with yours truly and The King and I, winner of 4 Tony Awards in 2015: Best Revival of a Musical, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Costume Design.
Shall we dance... after the jump?
When your soul is crying out to see a musical, you must take heed and so it was that I set fears aside and hit the show this Saturday evening. I worried that it had been playing too long and there was also my general indifference to Kelli O'Hara, the six time Tony nominee who finally won the top prize with this exact show... a happy ending that her big screen counterpart, six time Oscar nominee Deborah Kerr did not enjoy.
Fun coincidence I discovered AFTER the show: I saw it exactly a year to the date of its first preview. It is my great relief to say that if the show has any less energy and passion than it did a year ago I wouldn't know. There's no sign of fatigue. It was just gorgeous and emotional and committed and I loved every minute of it. (The sets and lighting were so exquisite that I puzzled how it hadn't won those Tonys too until I remembered how beautifully American in Paris was staged.)
Kelli O'Hara is one of Broadway's most reliable leading ladies but in truth I've always been a little cool on her. The voice is not the problem. She has an exquisite instrument, clear as a bell and soaring. The problem, at least for me, is that the typical Broadway diva draws (Bernadette, Patti, Audra, Chita, Chenoweth, Foster, Benanti) tend to have big personalities and/ or unmistakably dazzling charisma that are nearly as supersized as their voices. Why? Well you need to be supersized to fill all that space without the aid of a camera's intimacy. But as it turns out this proper British widowed schoolteacher is a role that fits O'Hara like a glove. The role doesn't require STAR TURN PIZAZZ so much as solid acting and O'Hara was simultaneously completely relaxed in the role and emotionally present throughout. And that heavenly voice!
Since the show has been open for a year they've been cycling through royal partners for Kelli O'Hara. Oscar nominee Ken Watanabe left some time ago (presumably due to his movie schedule) and the show has been playing musical chairs with its King since. Watanabe returns for one final month starting this weekend. But I didn't miss him. Yul Brynner's Oscar winning performance in the 1956 film was so formative for little me that I tend to get very judgy with any other Kings of Siam. I wasn't familiar with Hoon Lee who is about to leave the show but his rendition of "It's a Puzzlement" is the best I've ever heard of the song. I loved him in the role and hope to see him in something else. Apparently he's a regular on the TV show Banshee but I'm unfamiliar. For what it's worth he also played Charlotte's acupuncturist on Sex & the City. (Such is the plight of Asian actors - such limited roles for them!)
The movie version is the Yul & Deborah show but the supporting cast gets a better spotlight in the stage show
The rest of the cast was splendid, too. Though I still think little Sydney Lucas deserved the Featured Actress Tony for Fun Home: The Musical, Ruthie Ann Miles showstopping "Something Wonderful" as Lady Thiang is quite something.
This production is a true beauty, indeed the best version of this problematic musical that I can imagine. Frankly I was in heaven for 3 hours. "Problematic"... I know I know... the ever present all purpose word! Let's just say that this musical has always been a quagmire racially. It's saving grace is that its both deeply sympathetic and respectful to the Colonized East but it also exoticizes them and views their Westernization as a triumph. And then there's the matter of Tuptin's obsession with "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Nevertheless, If you've been putting this show off as I had been, don't delay. The King and I will continue to run without them (at least for awhile) but Kelli O'Hara & Ken Watanabe take their final bows together on April 17th.