The King and I – London Palladium

The King and I continues at the London Palladium until 29 September 2018.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

When director Bartlett Sher revived Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I at New York’s Lincoln Center, the show scooped four Tony Awards in the 2015 ceremony. Until now, the London transfer has been able to witness the reason behind three of those – it won Best Revival, Best Costume Design and Kelli O’Hara won for Best Leading Actress in a Musical.

Now, for the last few weeks of its residency at the London Palladium, audiences get a chance to witness the recipient of the show’s fourth Tony, as Ruthie Ann Miles reprises her role of Lady Thiang, for which she was awarded best Featured Actress in a Musical.

Miles’ appearance here marks the actress’ return to the stage after a tragic road accident in New York earlier this year in which Miles’ four-year-old daughter was killed and Miles’ own injuries meant that she later lost her unborn baby daughter.

Although audiences who have seen the show with British performer Naoko Mori (who continues to fill the role on select performances) will have in no way been short-changed, seeing Miles resume her role makes one appreciate how Mori has been working with the template set out by her predecessor.

As the eldest wife of Ken Watanabe’s King of Siam, Thiang at first strike seems like the imperious traditionalist who is most likely to come into conflict with O’Hara’s forthright and headstrong Anna Leonowens, brought in to be a governess to the King’s many young children. Instead, the pair become allies of sorts, helping the King as he seeks to modernise Siam in preparation for greater cooperation with the wider world.

Miles’s Thiang wears her increased status as mother of the King’s heir, Crown Prince Chulalongkorn (Jon Chew) lightly, expanding that maternal role to her husband’s many other wives. Her greatest moment of bonding with Anna comes with the lyrical ballad ‘Something Wonderful’, which Miles’ beautiful delivery ensures is the show’s emotional centre point: for all his faults, she argues, supporting the King is enriching and fulfilling for all.

And much can be said for the musical as a whole. This exquisite revival, which ensures that songs and book flow together naturally for the most part, and with choreography by Christopher Gattelli that helps the show feel less like an archaic American appropriation of East Asian iconography and culture, is impossible not to love.

But that love is for a show which is not wholly perfect. While the reworked Act II ballet, a presentation of a Siamese interpretation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’, feels more closely integrated with life at court and the plight of Burmese wife-cum-slave Tuptim (Na-Young Jeon), her clandestine relationship with Dean John-Wilson’s Lun Tha feels detached and, despite a romantic rendition of ‘We Kiss in the Shadows’, unfulfilling.

But that is a small negative in a show which remains full of traditional musical theatre joy: the sight of O’Hara’s Anna, always bedecked in a crinoline the size of a small Fringe theatre, polkaing around the Palladium stage in hold with Watanabe is just one of several iconic moments to bring pure joy to the stage.

But none lifts the heart quite so much as Ruthie Ann Miles, returning to work after such tragedy. Her story is one of pure inspiration.

Scott Matthewman