Playwright: music by Richard Rodgers, book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II
At: Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane in Oak Brook Terrace
Phone: 630-530-0111; $22-$41.50
Runs through: March 4
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
In a way, The King And I was rather progressive for its time: Previous to its premiere in 1951, Asians were rare onstage, their roles largely confined to villains, clowns and decor. Oscar Hammerstein's third-generation adaptation of Anna Leonowens' 1862 memoirs proposed a leading man of color—specifically, Asian Pacific—who forges an interracial relationship with an Englishwoman ( platonic, of course ) and dies at the play's conclusion.
Nowadays, however, The King And I is a social embarrassment in far bigger ways: Conceived as a star vehicle for Gertrude Lawrence, the dynamic between the forthright schoolmistress and the proud monarch seeking to give his children a European education is structured on the domestic-farce paradigm of the clever wife vs. the gullible husband ( very popular in post-WWII America ) . Richard Rodgers' eminently hummable score makes no attempt to mimic indigenous instrumentation beyond a few taps on a woodblock or finger-cymbals. And then there's the diminished acceptability of tarting up Anglo actors in horsehair wigs and Max Factor 'oriental.' Where, oh, where is a theatre company supposed to find singing and dancing Asians?
Drury Lane Director William Osetek has found one superlative representative of that demographic in Joseph Anthony Foronda, a veteran with the expected contemporary credits—Miss Saigon, Pacific Overtures, et al.—and a few unexpected, too. ( He played a French gallery owner in the Chicago Shakespeare production of Sunday in The Park With George—Hey! Genghis Khan's troops left no descendants? ) In the role of Siam's King Mongkut, he makes the story his own, with Anna—played by Mary Ernster with reliable pretty-as-a-plate-of-toffee charm—a formidable foil, but a foil, nevertheless. Jerome Robbins' original choreography is reproduced in full, but Rachel Rockwell appears to have researched the conventions of Pacific Islander theatre, reducing the potential drollery of its 19th-century subjects' observations on the contradictions of Victorian decorum. ( All countries' governmental foreign policies are conveniently overlooked. )
Despite valiant efforts to counteract the text's frivolous elements, however, The King and I is unlikely to be anything but a museum piece to future generations. In the meantime, Drury Lane Oakbrook has assembled as stellar a rainbow-coalition cast as could be wished for here and now. And in an age of put-it-all-out-there sexual expression, the Shall We Dance? number continues to be the most romantic scene in the history of the American musical theatre. See it while you can.
