Kelli and King Ken reunite in the West End
KELLI O’HARA, America’s foremost interpreter of classic musicals, will make her West End debut starring in the landmark Rodgers and Hammerstein show The King And I.
The production, directed by Bartlett Sher, waltzes into the London Palladium for a season from June 21, 2018 (as this column was first to reveal).
It was a sensational success in New York, where it ran for 16 months until June last year. It collected four Tony trophies, including best musical revival and best actress in a musical for Kelli’s portrait of Anna Leonowens, who is hired to teach the royal children of the King of Siam.
She will reunite with Ken Watanm abe (Inception, Letters From Iwo Jima). They were partners for the first five months of the run at New York’s famous Lincoln Center.
Watching them was wonderful. I thought I was done with revivals of The King And I until I saw Sher’s heartfelt production.
The Shall We Dance waltz scene between Anna and the King left
‘She has the most glorious voice in musical theatre’
audiences misty-eyed. Truth is, I’ve seen most of Ms O’Hara’s Broadway shows — from roles in Matthew Warchus’s Follies and Nicholas Hytner’s Sweet Smell Of Success to her collaborations with Sher in The Light In The Piazza, South Pacific, The Bridges Of Madison County, as well as The King And I.
She possesses, as Sher notes, ‘the most glorious voice of any soprano working in musical theatre today’. Sher relishes working with her because the magic happens when you join that voice ‘with this really powerful intelligence as an actor’.
He added: ‘The minute she starts singing is a whole other level.’
I recall bumping into Laurie Mansfield, the London agent, and his wife, after what must have been my third time at The King And I — Laurie’s seen everything, but even he was bowled over by O’Hara and the show.
By then, producer Howard Panter had begun looking for a London theatre — plus a tour of Asia, some of which, it’s hoped, O’Hara and Watanabe, 58, might do.
O’Hara, 41, speaking from New York where she’s preparing for a concert version of Brigadoon, approaches every show as if it were new — rather than reflecting on what has gone before. ‘I want to make the person a person. I feel strongly about trying not to be so much a personality.’
One thing she and Sher do so brilliantly is to root a classic show in its time and place, but to somehow make it resonate.
‘When we did South Pacific, Barack Obama was running for president and it’s a story focused on race. When we were first doing The King And I, Hillary Clinton was running for president and we saw the chance to tell a story about feminism,’ she said, adding it was vital to show that little would have been achieved by ‘bullying’ the king in the show.
‘There’s no reality if she (Anna) comes in and bullies the king.
‘There’s only movement if she comes in and becomes a team mate of the king’s, earns his trust. She’s smarter doing it that way.’
The actress, married with two children aged four and eight, was raised in Elk City, Oklahoma, and embodies the sensibilities of America’s heartland.
She told me: ‘I love what I do. I perform on the stage and TV and so on and I love to put myself in there, but as a person I’m a mom, and I’m a wife and I’m a friend.’
Director Sher told me there’s a part of O’Hara in all of the roles she has played for him. ‘She will fight for what she believes in, powerfully. Love of family, hard work and caring for others.’
Tickets and more details soon via www.kingandimusical.co.uk.