Call The Midwife’s Helen George will star as Anna Leonowens when the multi–Tony Award-winning Lincoln Center Theater production of The King and I embarks on its second UK tour early next year.
Following on from its record-breaking season at the London Palladium in 2018 and its first record-breaking, UK and international tour in 2019, Bartlett Sher’s acclaimed Broadway production will begin its second tour at Canterbury’s Marlowe Theatre on 4 February 2023. The tour will then visit Wimbledon, Liverpool, Birmingham, High Wycombe, Bristol, Dartford, Bradford, Southend, Cardiff, Manchester, Glasgow and Dublin. Further UK cities and details of a major international tour will be announced soon.
Commenting on her casting in the lavish production, the actress whose musical theatre credits include roles in Company and Love Never Dies said: “Theatre is my first love, and I am so excited to be returning to the stage for this beautiful, majestic production of The King and I. I was blown away when I saw Bartlett Sher’s staging of this wonderful show, so I can’t wait to work with him and the rest of the creative team to bring this timeless story back to the stage next year. Anna is such a strong, passionate and determined character, and I’m going to relish bringing her to life every night, as well as giving audiences all over the UK the chance to see this peerless Broadway and West End musical right on their doorstep.”
George will be part of a world-class company of over 50 talented performers and a full-scale orchestra. The tour follows the successful cinema screening of The King and I: From the London Palladium. The live event during the 2018 season attracted over 135,000 cinemagoers across the world.
The production arrived in the UK in 2018 following an acclaimed 16-month Broadway run and a record-breaking US tour. Director Sher heads the same creative team behind the 2008 award-winning revival of South Pacific and the recent Lincoln Center Theater production of My Fair Lady at the London Coliseum.
With music by Richard Rodgers, book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and widely regarded as one of their finest works, The King and I boasts a score that includes the classics ‘Getting to Know You’, ‘Hello Young Lovers’, ‘Shall We Dance’ and ‘Something Wonderful’.
Loosely based on a true story and set in 1860s Bangkok, the musical tells the story of the unconventional and tempestuous relationship that develops between the King of Siam and Anna Leonowens, a British schoolteacher whom the imperious King brings to Siam to tutor his many wives and children.
The musical opened on Broadway in 1951, with veteran actress Gertrude Lawrence as Anna and relatively unknown actor and television director Yul Brynner as The King. Brynner would famously go on to play the role on tour, in the West End and in the hit 1956 film alongside leading lady Deborah Kerr.
Angela Thomas
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