The King and I – Dominion Theatre

Helen George and Darren Lee in The King and I at the Dominion Theatre, London. Picture: Johan Persson

The King and I continues at the Dominion Theatre, London until 2 March 2024.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

It’s almost six years since Bartlett Sher’s Lincoln Center production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic The King and I, starring the wonderful American actress Kelli O’Hara as the British governess Anna Leonowens and a sometimes hard-to-understand Ken Watanabe as the King of Siam, arrived in the West End and, in truth, apart from the cast, little has changed.

It’s still a stately ocean liner of a show, almost three hours long, as traditional as ever, and after a year on tour it’s at the welcoming Dominion only for five weeks, holding the fort for Sister Act.

Loosely based on a true story but heavily romanticised – we learn from the programme that Anna was quite a conwoman in real life, upgrading her late husband from clerk to highly decorated army officer, promoting her father from private to major and carefully overlooking her mother’s Indian heritage. In fact she was a penniless English teacher whose posh accent was manufactured – it’s not the part Call the Midwife’s Helen George is asked to portray. But she’s a tough cookie all right, fearlessly standing up to the king’s bluster like no Siamese woman would have dared to do and eventually winning the day over her promised house and pay rise.

She realises that behind that bluster there’s a wise man who wants to be kind and to love her but doesn’t know how to go about it. Darren Lee plays him with a fierce intelligence and their famed ‘Shall We Dance?’ routine, using all of the Dominion’s prodigious space – was it really almost 70 years since Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr entranced us so unforgettably in the movie? – had the enthused audience clapping along. It really is a marvellous scene.

As a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music, George is returning to what she was trained for and what a good fist she makes of it. She can certainly sing, and whistle too. It always helps to have great songs to sing and the enduring quality of ‘Hello, Young Lovers’,  ‘I Whistle a Happy Tune’ and ‘Getting to Know You’ are tackled with the confidence of a performer who knows she’s a star. It’s not a big voice but has a lovely sweetness to it.

For the big voice in the show, look no further than the powerful rich tone of Cezarah Bonner as the king’s No. 1 wife Lady Thiang. Almost an operatic soprano, she is hypnotisingly on point in ‘Something Wonderful’ and ‘Western People Funny’ and I cannot imagine them being better sung.

Marienella Philips as another wife, Tuptim, but one who strays and is made to suffer the consequences is also very easy on the ear and the quality of the vocals throughout is out of the top drawer, much helped by the lush sound of the 15-strong orchestra under the baton of Christopher Mundy.

Dean John-Wilson as Tuptim’s lover was always going to come to sticky end but not before he and Philips make ‘I Have Dreamed’ every bit as romantic as it should be. Elsewhere, the young, forward-thinking crown prince, played by Caleb Lagayan, is going to take Siam into the modern era when he ascends the throne, greatly helped by Anna’s tuition. Sam Jenkins-Shaw sounds suitably British army as the emissary Sir Edward Ramsay who still holds a torch for Anna.

Then, of course, there are the adorably cute Siamese children cuddling up to the governess as if she were their mother and the king’s harem of wives who literally worship at his feet. In a scene played for laughs Anna, as was the Siamese rule with royalty, has to get flat, stomach-down on the stage to be lower than the playful king who is falling in love with her. But these old customs are about to change.

The Siamese ballet, a show-within-a-show and based on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s powerful novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin about slavery and racism, although beautifully choreographed by Christopher Gattelli (from the Jerome Robbins original), seemed to go on too long when first seen in 2018 and is still too long for my taste, although is the highlight of the show for some. But Michael Yeargan’s flamboyant sets, from the moment that ship comes into dock and announces Anna’s arrival, and Catherine Zuber’s stupendous costumes are bang on the money.

Not so clever is the expensive programme which omits the song list and who performed them. One of most important pieces of intel for a musical, this keeps happening, not just at the Dominion,  and it is outrageous. I have written about it several times before but nobody seems to be listening. Thank goodness for Wikipedia!

Jeremy Chapman