Kelli and Ken bring the King to town
KeLLI O’Hara was reunited with her King — and Ken Watanabe had his ‘english school teacher’ back.
Did they dance? For a little bit. ‘We ran in the room and just hugged and hugged and hugged,’ Ms O’Hara told me.
the pair are old friends. they shared the stage of the vivian Beaumont theater at the Lincoln Center in new York in the most glorious production of the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II musical the King And I that I have ever seen (and I’ve sat through a few!). It’s now heading into the London Palladium, with previews starting on June 21.
O’Hara joined the Palladium company and director Bartlett Sher in a rehearsal studio on Wednesday. ‘It’s 100 per cent my London debut,’ she said.
everyone kept apologising to me, explaining that O’Hara was jet-lagged. You wouldn’t have known it. Working with Sher again ‘is like putting on an old shoe that fits pretty comfortably’, she told me. ‘We’re back at it, and it’s a good feeling.’
She watched, fully engaged, as Dean John-Wilson, playing Burmese emissary Lun tha, presented the King (who looked splendid in a tracksuit paired with day-glo nike trainers) with a ‘gift’ in the shape of na-Young Jeon’s tuptim (right).
And then, like all of us in the room, she was entranced by na-Young’s beautiful voice as she sang My Lord And Master.
then it was her turn. Dressed in a work uniform of black slacks, t-shirt, cardie and, for contrast, a white hooped underskirt (well, it IS set in 1862, and Catherine Zuber’s superb costumes are not for the rehearsal studio) she mapped her way through the King’s wives as she quietly began to introduce the song Hello Young Lovers. then she lifted it into the stratosphere.
that’s why she won a tony Award for best actress in a musical. I’ve seen her in pretty much everything she has done in new York, from playing in the ensemble of Follies in 2001 through the Light In the Piazza (the first time she was directed by Sher) and on through the Pajama Game, South Pacific, nice Work If You Can Get It and the Bridges Of Madison County.
‘You heard that voice, right?’ Sher asked me. ‘nobody has a better voice. And she has all that rich acting skill. I don’t think there’s a better soprano working in musical theatre.’
It’s true. Plus, she has this way of drawing an audience in. S h e r agreed. ‘ the greatest of the actors make the biggest space feel like somebody’s living room.’ Ms O’Hara is from Oklahoma. She has an easy-going grace, but she’s nobody’s fool.
Her co- star, Watanabe, said he’s ‘very happy’ the Palladium has a proscenium stage, unlike the Beaumont’s thrust. ‘the proscenium is more comfortable for singing,’ said the actor, best known for screen roles in Batman Begins, Inception and Letters From Iwo Jima. He’s also thrilled to be doing the polka again with O’Hara. ‘I listened to Hello Young Lovers hundreds of times backstage in new York and was so happy to hear it again today.’ He’s keen to present the show to the Palladium audience. ‘this story of the King of Siam and Anna the school teacher is completely england. english people, I think, love this story — maybe more than in America. the story of different cultures, sexual feelings and the need to be a little more sensitive is a good story.’ Sher said he waited for O’Hara and Watanabe to be available before agreeing to bring the show to London. ‘ He has all the traits of a real king,’ Sher said of the actor, ‘ as opposed to the more elevated, overthe-top qualities that (Yul) Brynner had.’
the director observed that Rodgers and Hammerstein had ‘ years and years of these weird versions that go for all the schmaltz and sentiment and don’t get all the other stuff underneath.
‘this is a kingdom in trouble — it’s got Cambodia all around it, it’s besieged by colonialism, there are the stresses of the industrial revolution, it’s a time of huge transformation. And he’s trying to figure out how to protect his country.
‘this school teacher shows up and gives him an insight into how to protect his country.’
We talked a bit about how our perceptions of golden age musicals are changing because of the #metoo movement. But Sher insists that the King And I isn’t a #metoo kind of show.
‘We do have to think differently about how Anna and the King interact. But he lives in an era where men and women weren’t equal.
‘the bigger lesson is about the education of women in developing countries, and developing countries changing. He’s in the middle of such a transformation — and he has to change.’