Lush, Tony-winning revival of 'The King and I' reigns in Playhouse Square's Connor Palace (photos, video)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Lincoln Center Theater's luminous revival of "The King and I" comes to Playhouse Square carrying a lot of freight. And that's not just all those trunks belonging to British schoolteacher Anna Leonowens and her young son Louis as they...

Lush, Tony-winning revival of 'The King and I' reigns in Playhouse Square's Connor Palace (photos, video)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Lincoln Center Theater's luminous revival of "The King and I" comes to Playhouse Square carrying a lot of freight. And that's not just all those trunks belonging to British schoolteacher Anna Leonowens and her young son Louis as they make their way to her new assignment - teaching the many wives and children of King Mongkut of Siam in 1860s Bangkok.

The original 1951 Broadway production of the Rodgers & Hammerstein masterpiece launched the career of bald ball of manhood Yul Brynner as a modernist King struggling to navigate the shifting alliances of an imperialistic world and rule his own increasingly ungovernable heart.

Brynner - a Russian-born shape-shifter who clouded his ethnic background by design, no doubt helping him land a greater variety of roles - would go on to play the part onstage more than 4,600 times, with a late, memorable turn in Cleveland at the State Theatre in 1984.

As a condition of his appearance in Playhouse Square, the actor asked that his dressing room be freshly painted chocolate brown, a request born, or so the story goes, of playing so many filthy dumps on his way to the big time. He also requested that the path from dressing room to stage be covered in strips of fabric, or some such makeshift walkway, in the same color. (At least he didn't ask for a bowl of all brown M&Ms.)

Brynner, and the ghosts of productions past, can't help but flit about inside our heads as we take our seats, including the sumptuous 1956 film adaptation of the musical that won Brynner an Oscar. (In an especially delicious irony, he reportedly failed a screen test at Universal in 1947 because he was told he looked "too Oriental.")

Shall We Dance?

As diverting as that film remains, its dearth of Asian performers, particularly in major roles, is, ahem, notable. How else to explain Rita Moreno as Tuptim, a human gift from the Burmese king to the ruler of Siam, and Mexican-German actor Carlos Rivas as her secret paramour, Lun Tha?

Today, "yellowface" casting - when non-Asian actors are made up to appear Asian - belongs in the Dumpster in the alley of history, alongside the Playbill of 1991's "Miss Saigon," starring English actor Jonathan Pryce in the role of the Vietnamese Engineer, and a moldy VHS copy of "Breakfast at Tiffany's," with Mickey Rooney's now-unwatchable bucktoothed turn as I. Y. Yunioshi.

(Somebody should tell director Cameron Crowe, who tapped Emma Stone to star in his 2015 film "Aloha" as a woman who's supposed to be a quarter Hawaiian and a quarter Chinese.)

That those niggling ghosties are exorcised almost instantly by this extraordinarily beautiful, exquisitely (and thoughtfully) crafted production directed by Bartlett Sher is cause for real celebration - a night of fireworks, as King Mongkut would have it, if he were actually in charge of things.

Sher's "King and I" not only honors the Rodgers and Hammerstein golden age classic - with a muscular pit orchestra giving a rousing performance of its lush, memorable score - but offers us a fresh, 21st-century face.

The 2015 Lincoln Center production famously featured Asian performers in all 46 Asian roles, 29 of whom were making their Broadway debuts. That, in and of itself, is thrilling.

For the most part, the U.S. tour has stayed true to that aesthetic, with almost all Asian parts played by actors of Asian heritage.

The production begins with a dramatic visual flourish, steering one of its most stunning scenic elements - the massive Chow Phya, the boat ferrying Anna (Laura Michelle Kelly) and Louis (Graham Montgomery) to Bangkok - to the very lip of the stage. (Lighting designer Donald Holder intensifies its realness, creating the illusion of water in a dancing reflection on its massive hull.)

As it towers there, looking as though it could just as easily continue its journey into the laps of those in the first row, the widowed Anna stands on deck and sings "I Whistle a Happy Tune" to help calm their fears. When the ship hits the dock, it splits in two; one piece drifts out of sight, the other becomes a gangway. Mother and son are greeted by the crush of Bangkok street life, the sky above their heads filled with clouds stained orange and red.

The fiery sunset portends the tumult to come when the independent Anna faces off against the proudly chauvinistic monarch. (As the man says, "A honey bee must be free, but blossom must not ever fly from bee to bee to bee!") Catherine Zuber carries those same, hot-blooded colors into her Tony Award-winning costumes, a riot of saturated silks brocaded in gold.

In "Something Wonderful," sung by the great Joan Almedilla as Lady Thiang in the night's most stirring number, Almedilla wears a traditional Thai dress in red accented by stunning orange robe. As the King's first wife, supplanted by a long string of younger and younger sister wives, she is flame itself; her love still burns for him, even if his ardor for her has faded.

Once in the palace, scenery is stripped away, revealing a spare stage defined by large, movable set pieces: a giant golden Buddha in the King's study; an elaborate map in Anna's classroom; and crystal chandeliers suspended above a banquet table in the dining room, a nod to the King's desire to be more Western.

The most innovative aspect of Michael Yeargan's set design is a collection of carved wooden pillars that reach beyond our sight lines into the rafters. They appear and disappear, stand like sentries or provide cover for the doomed, furtive young lovers Tuptim (Manna Nichols) and Lun Tha (Kavin [CQ] Panmeechao).

The ballet of "The Small House of Uncle Thomas," a retelling of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" staged by Tuptim as a Hamletesque "the play's the thing" dig against her King and all slaveholders, runs a close second.

The mesmerizing, visual tour de force features Jerome Robbins' celebrated choreography, a fusion of Asian dance (those raised, flexed feet and limbs bent at nearly 90-degree angles) and the humor of vaudeville.

It has been remounted in every Broadway revival since its conception for its brilliance. In it, we see "poor Eliza" run from Simon Legree by hopping across the stage, knee bent and on one foot.

From their first meeting, Anna and her royal employer fight like people in love and wound each other with the same passion. King Mongkut (Jose Llana) respects Anna's strategic mind but demands her obedience. Anna tries to break the King of his autocratic ways and help him present his true self - a man of canny intelligence and deep feeling - to a British emissary with an eye toward consuming Siam and turning it into a "protectorate."

"One day, I wish to build a fence around Siam . . ." says the frustrated King, a line followed by a roar of laughter and applause Wednesday night. (The jury is out as to whether the reaction was droll recognition or agreement, though a similar commotion greeted his next line: ". . . And the next day, let everybody in!")

As Anna and her King, Kelly and Llana more than fill the formidable shoes of those who waltzed before them. Kelly, who dissolved audiences to puddles as terminal young mother Sylvia Llewelyn Davies to Matthew Morrison's J.M. Barrie in Broadway's "Finding Neverland," is made of sturdier stuff here, as unbreakable as her whalebone corset.

Llana, who made his Broadway debut as Lun Tha in the 1996 revival starring Lou Diamond Philips, brings a likable lightness and wit to the role. He is a charming tyrant.

The two stop sparring and come together for one glorious, erotically charged moment in "Shall We Dance?" Anna wears Zuber's signature piece - a sweeping, luminescent lavender ball gown with a hem circumference of nearly 30 feet.

After a few awkward passes, they grow more comfortable in each other's arms and pick up speed, becoming a whirl of laughter and satin. Suddenly, the carved posts are on the move, too, dancing along with them, creating the impression that they are twirling through a vast, endless ballroom.

The essence of the scene is pure childlike abandon, and its abrupt end feels like a hard slap. When secret police drag a weeping Tuptim into the room, caught trying to escape with her lover, now dead, the world of the musical is soon bled of its vivid color, revealing a line of silhouetted mourners who emerge from a white fog. The King's reign is over, and a new ruler - kinder, gentler and, we hope, wiser - emerges.

But what we remember is how they danced, and the gorgeous, giddy thrill of a "King" for the new century.

REVIEW

The King and I

What: Lincoln Center Theater's Tony Award-winning revival of the storied musical. Based on the 1944 novel "Anna and the King of Siam" by Margaret Landon. Music by Richard Rodgers, book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. Choreography by Christopher Gattelli, based on the original choreography of Jerome Robbins. Directed by Bartlett Sher.

Where: Playhouse Square's Connor Palace, Cleveland.

When: Through Sunday, Feb. 26.

Tickets: $10-$110, available at the box office, 216-241-6000 and playhousesquare.org

Approximate running time: 2 hours and 50 minutes, including one intermission.

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