The King and I

by Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II

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Critical Overview

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Expectations were high for the latest production by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein when The King and I opened at the St. James Theater in New York City in 1951. It earned mostly favorable reviews, with only a few being less than enthusiastic. The lavish sets by Jo Mielziner and costumes by Irene Sharaff created a glamorous backdrop; As David Ewen quoted an admirer in New Complete Book of American Musical Theater, the work represented "a flowering of all the arts of the theater with moments that are pure genius." However, some critics found fault with the boyscoutish seriousness of the play, especially its melodramatic ending. The New Yorker reviewer John Lardner liked the exotic touches, but found the play "a little too unremittingly wholesome" and the lyrics too "corny." Lardner disliked the "touch of Walt Disney in all the recent Rodgers and Hammerstein shows." Nation reviewer Margaret Marshall lamented that the play took all of actress Gertrude Lawrence's showmanship to prevent the play's drawn-out plot from "sagging too often'' but added that "even Miss Lawrence [could] do little with the last scene." A reviewer for Time found the "battle of sexes, collision of races and conflict of ideas sometimes touching, and far less insipid than the usual musicomedy romance."

Other reviewers struggled to find words to describe this new musical form that departed from musical comedy in its seriousness of plot and theme. A critic writing in Harper's noted that The King and I was not billed as a musical comedy but as a "musical play," and suggested that "it might better have been billed as 'a sentimental fantasy with music and a message thrown in.'" Later in the article, the reviewer's distaste gathers steam: "Mr. Hammerstein has got his mediums mixed up. He wants to perform the function of the serious problem-drama (that is, to provide searching insight into the psycho-philosophical stresses of individuals and of society) with the light, but not too light touch. The theater provides two established methods for such delving: the serious drama and high comedy." Rodger's and Hammerstein had introduced this a form of musical back in 1927 with the groundbreaking Show Boat, which, like The King and I has a more fully developed plot and songs that advance the story along. The King and /also tackled a more serious topic, and reviewers had not yet developed a critical vocabulary for evaluating this new form of "musical" (as opposed to the "musical comedy") on its own terms. Nevertheless, the 1951 stage production with Gertrude Lawrence and Yul Brynner received Antoinette Perry (also called Tony) Awards for best musical of the year, and the play was the first musical to win the Theater Club Award.

By the time of the release of Twentieth Century-Fox's film of adaptation of The King and I— with Brynner reprising his stage role and starring Deborah Kerr as Anna (her singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon), critics had accepted Rodgers and Hammerstein's new form, but some still rankled at the melodrama of the King's death at the end. A Time reviewer found that the film "moves along satisfactorily from spectacle to spectacle until the conclusion, when it's message (democracy is good; slavery is bad) gets a truly pedestrian delivery at Yul Brynner's deathbed." On the other hand, a critic for Commonweal called the film a "magnificent production" and actually praised the finale, calling it "joyful and tearful." Former musical conductor turned critic Lehman Engel writing in 1967 also found the end fitting; he pointed out in his book The American Musical Theater , that...

(This entire section contains 935 words.)

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in comparison to the original story by Leonowens and its adaptation by Margaret Landon in which the King does not die, Hammerstein's decision to have the King die is "a far more effective (and conclusive!) piece of dramaturgy." The film received nine Academy Award nominations and won five, including one for Yul Brynner's performance and one for the musical score. It also won two Golden Globe Awards for best film and best actress in a musical/comedy (for Deborah Kerr).

A spate of six new or revived musicals competed for New York theatregoers' attentions in 1996, among them a revival of The King and I starring Lou Diamond Phillips (best known for his portrayal of Ritchie Valens in the film La Bamba) as the King and Donna Murphy as Anna with direction by Christopher Renshaw. In spite of trepidation over whether anyone could erase the memory of Yul Brynner in the role that seemed custom designed for him, the revival enjoyed ecstatic reviews on its debut. As a Newsday reviewer noted, Lou Diamond Phillips "was the wild card when he dared to step into Yul Brynner's footsteps," and while a People reporter found that he fails to bring Brynner's "heft or authority to the role," a critic writing in Time agreed with the majority of critics who commended Phillips because he "eventually shrugs off the shroud of Yul Byrnner" to create a his own memorable version of the Siamese king. New York audiences, hoping for an evening of nostalgia, got even more than they could imagine from the $5.5 million-dollar production. The staging was so successful that it catapulted the musical into a new realm of legitimacy; New York magazine critic John Simon found himself comparing it to opera: "I never thought I would say this about a musical, but in a production such as this, The King and I is the equal of all but the supreme operatic masterpieces." Perhaps the musical has, indeed, come of age-Time concluded that "Rodgers and Hammerstein songs are secular hymns—liturgical music for the American mid-century."

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