By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
Full-sized in every sense of the word, Broadway in Tucson's touring production of “The King and I” continues a phenomenal theater season of one stage triumph after another for several companies here in the Baked Apple.
Just as “The King and I” did in New York at Lincoln Center, according to online reports, this traveling Titanic never sinks but celebrates its size and wonder right to the very last note. Just like on opening night in Tucson.
Both Jose Llana as The King and Laura Michelle Kelly as Anna the feisty British school teacher have held starring roles in other Broadway shows. Now they are out on the road in this all-Equity effort because veteran director Bartlett Sher (who directed the Lincoln Center revival) also put this tour together.
Quality in depth was the other king onstage.
This is the fourth revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's “The King and I,” with a score that includes at least six classic show tunes, depending on how you weigh them. For sure the list includes “I Whistle A Happy Tune,” “Hello, Young Lovers,” “Getting To Know You,” “We Kiss in a Shadow,” “I Have Dreamed” and “Shall We Dance.”
The kingdom of Siam is richly represented in the elaborate detail of costumes, sets and furnishings. A cast of 36 keeps the stage filled with singers, dancers, Siamese court figures and children. The special ballet feature, “The Small House of Uncle Thomas,” is a work of art in itself.
Within seconds after the opening curtain, a massive sailing ship sticks its prow out over the orchestra pit, then we see Anna and the ship's captain on a dangerous looking wharf. Before the first note is sung, it has been made clear that for the next two hours and fifty-five minutes all stops will be pulled.
Looking beneath this gorgeous, sumptuous surface are the strong bones of a classic show written at the beginning of what has become one of the most tumultuous periods of social change in American history – from 1951 to now.
Did the two composers really see the end of colonial empires, the rise of developing nations, the patronizing of one race by another, the determination of white women to have a say in the leadership of their own society? We'd like to think they did. All the real social change has taken place in the audience.
No doubt all four of those revivals peeled back more layers of different meaning, finding in both the song lyrics and relationships Anna formed not just just with the King but also with the most significant of his wives, Lady Thiang (Joan Almedilla), the young lovers Tuptim (Q Lim) and Lun Tha (Kavin Panmeechao, and the King's children, innocent of the cultural differences between England the colonial power and Siam the naive nation with its progressive leader.
“The King and I” runs through March 18, with performances at 7:30 p.m. March 14-15; 8 p.m. March 16; 2 and 8 p.m. March 17; 1 and 6:30 p.m. March 18, in Centennial Hall, 1020 E. University Blvd., at the University of Arizona. Tickets are $29 - $125. For details and reservations, www.broadwayintucson.com or at the Centennial Hall box office.
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