Picture: Johan Persson
The multi Tony Award-winning Lincoln Center Theater production of The King and I will embark on its second UK tour from January 2023.
Following on from its record-breaking season at the London Palladium in 2018 and its previous, also record-breaking, UK and international tour which began in April 2019, Bartlett Sher’s acclaimed Broadway production will open in Canterbury on 30 January 2023.
Following two weeks at Canterbury’s Marlowe Theatre, the production will visit Wimbledon, Liverpool, Birmingham, Wycombe, Bristol, Dartford, Bradford, Southend, Cardiff, Manchester and Glasgow.
Further venues and casting will be announced later this year along with international tour details. The tour follows the successful cinema release of The King and I: From the London Palladium. The live event during the 2018 season attracted over 135,000 cinema-goers across the world.
Announcing the new tour, producer Howard Panter said: “We are delighted to take this majestic multi-award-winning production of The King and I on a major UK and international tour in 2023. The London Palladium season saw critical plaudits, box office records and standing ovations at every show – we were overwhelmed with the rapturous response.
“Coupled with the reaction to the Global cinema screenings of the film version – which was the biggest theatre event in cinemas of the year and number one at the box office. This really is musical theatre at its very best, so we are thrilled that we can now share this wondrous production with theatre lovers up and down the country next year.”
The show 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 which is currently playing 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 King and I debuted 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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