Not surprisingly, something is missing from a musical when neither of the leads can sing. In the touring production of "The King and I" that opened Saturday at the Kennedy Center, Vee Talmadge plays the King of Siam and Hayley Mills is Anna Leonowens, the Welsh schoolteacher who brings Western ideas to his court. The king's role isn't challenging vocally, and a so-so singer with a warm, humorous, authoritative stage presence such as Talmadge can do fine in the role. Anna is another matter. Mills is an impressively natural actress, and she's completely charming in the speaking parts, but she's playing a character who has to sing "Hello, Young Lovers," "Getting to Know You" and "Shall We Dance?" in one of the most tuneful of all the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals.
Director Christopher Renshaw and his set and lighting designers Brian Thompson and Nigel Levings have turned out an opulent, exotic-looking production. Written in 1950-51, "The King and I" is naively un-PC. The script simply takes for granted that 19th-century Western civilization was superior to Eastern, particularly as regards slavery and women's rights. Today, Rodgers and Hammerstein's complacence about how well the West -- read America -- has solved all the problems of slavery is ironic when not downright embarrassing.
The star of the show is choreographer Jerome Robbins, whose dances here are as terrific in their way as the much raunchier ones across town at the National in "Chicago." There isn't a lot of dancing in "The King and I" -- it's mostly movement for non-dancers -- but when there is, Robbins cuts loose with a flourish. The mini ballet in the play-within-the-play "The Small House of Uncle Thomas" remains a dazzler.
"Shall We Dance?" is one of the great romantic numbers in American musicals, but it doesn't take off here, largely because there's no spark between Talmadge and Mills. He's manly and she's pretty, but they just don't click. Around the dead center of this supposed romance, the rest of the show whirls colorfully and entertainingly. In particular, Timothy Ford Murphy as the doomed lover, Lun Tha, and Naomi Itami as the head wife, Lady Thiang, have lovely voices. Roger Kirk's costumes are sumptuous.
Take the kids, but expect your mind to wander.
The King and I, music by Richard Rodgers, book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, based on the novel "Anna and the King of Siam" by Margaret Landon. Sound, Tony Meola and Lewis Mead; tour lighting design, Michael Baldassari; orchestrations, Robert Russell Bennett; musical supervision, Eric Stern; music direction, Kevin Farrell. With Ian Stuart, Jesse McCartney, Ernest Abuba, Luzviminda Lor, Andrew Guyvijitr. At the Kennedy Center Opera House through May 18. Call 202-467-4600.
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