London Palladium
The Broadway revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical comes to the West End with fine acting, handsome staging and inescapable overtones of western imperialism
This 1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein show may be a Broadway classic but it presents a constant difficulty: it seems to endorse the idea of the civilising influence of the west on the barbarian east. Bartlett Sher’s much-lauded Lincoln Center production is handsomely mounted and boasts two star performances from Kelli O’Hara and Ken Watanabe but, in addressing the musical’s dated premise, it creates further problems.
Normally we see the show as a closet romance in which a spirited young governess, Anna Leonowens, wins the heart and mind of the King of Siam whose children she has been hired to educate. In this version, however, the real battle goes on within the soul of the king himself. He is partly a testy patriarch, partly an anxious politician who sees his neighbours succumbing to colonialism. The conflict is expressed in the number A Puzzlement, which Yul Brynner often arbitrarily cut when he played the role. Watanabe makes it clear, however, that the king faces a dilemma as he asks: “Shall I join other nations in alliance, If allies are weak am I not best alone?”
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