June 2011

“IS A PUZZLEMENT”
By Roberta Cashwell

Who doesn’t remember the lusciously elegant scene in the movie, THE KING & I, when Deborah Kerr sweeps Yul Brynner off his feet and around the palace ballroom to the strains of “Shall We Dance?”
The 1956 film brought sudden fame to the relatively unknown Brynner, who not only made the role his own but also redirected the story’s emphasis to the King, not Anna.
Adapted from Margaret Landon’s novel, ANNA & THE KING OF SIAM, the movie and the musical play are set in 1860’s Bangkok in the court of King Mongkut. This progressive king has hired a strong-willed English widow, Anna Leonowens, to teach his many children. The play opens with Anna’s arrival, and the battle of wills begins when Anna learns that the King has reneged on his promise that she would live in her own house, rather than in the palace as a servant. From there, the two clash, even as they fall in love (the best kind of romance), until the bittersweet end.
The musical opened on Broadway in March 1951, and played for over 1200 performances. Gertrude Lawrence (who had conceived the musical and for whom it was written) played Anna to Brynner’s King. Contractually, she was to have portrayed the role in the film as well, but she died of cancer during the Broadway run.
Both the musical and the movie were financial and critical successes. However, they had been considered risky ventures when Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II initially adapted Landon’s novel. After all, neither hero nor heroine falls overtly in love and, in the end, the hero dies. What’s more, there is nothing steamier than a “kiss in a shadow.”
A puzzlement, indeed.
Nonetheless, for over 60 years, audiences have come again and again to watch Anna match wit and will to the King’s and to learn of tolerance for cultures foreign to one’s own...