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The King And I     416-872-2262 Book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. Lerics by Richard Rodgers. Directed by Christopher Renshaw. Sets by Brian Thomson. Costumes by Roger Kirk. Lighting by Nigel Levings. Choreography by Lar Lubovitch and Jerome Robbins. Until Aug. 3 at the Hummingbird Centre, 1 Front St. E.

Sumptuous costumes, lithe bodies, magical masks, cute kids and songs that won't surrender their simple-minded significance for another half-century - all these and yet the much-trumpeted revival of a much-praised musical doesn't stand time's test.

The King And I, number six in the hit collaboration of Rodgers and Hammerstein, proceeded in stately fashion into the Humniingbird Centre last night for a short run, doubtless banking on memories of Yul Brynner and Gertrude Lawrence, Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr and, well, Yul Brynner.

He made the role of the king of Siam his own - he performed it 4,625 times - but in 1997, with Vee Talmadge playing opposite Hayley Mills as prim, proper but staunchly middle-class English widow Anna Leonowens, who's to instruct the ruler's 77 children, the sparks don't fly at all. The long-smoldering embers of their inevitable entanglement blaze only in the final scenes.

There's also meant to be more than just the push-and-pull of woman and man in this tale, with potential conflict everywhere - of Eastern and Western values, of absolutism and individual freedom, of religion, of long-held customs. Yet although the musical's book is based on the memoirs of the real Mrs. Anna when she taught King Mongkut's brood in the 1860s, the interpretation of them today is hopelessly corrupted. The large number of Asian actors in the cast is commendable, but it is not funny now to have all the Siamese (now Thais) struggle to master pidgin English as a mark of their learning and modernity. It is a patronizing conceit of English imperialism, guaranteed endorsement by Americans.

Seeing Siam through Western eyes should not blind the audience, however, to recognizing that there's much on which to feast the eyes. There are segments, such as the stylized show-within-a-show when the king's court puts on a drama dubbed "The Small House Of Uncle Thomas" (Uncle Tom's Cabin), when it actually generates some considerable interest.

The big songs ARE big, too, though it's the cast's second line that delivers them best, notably Helen Yu as first wife Chiang indulging her operatic skills with "Something Wonderful" and doomed lovers Luzviminda Lor (Tuptim) and Timothy Ford Murphy (Lun Tha) with "We Kiss In A Shadow."

But Mills, while the right actress to deal with the king's bluster - he's far nastier than Von Trapp was to Julie Andrews in The Sound Of Music - doesn't make anything of "Hello, Young Lovers" or "I Whistle A Happy Tune," though she and Talmadge at least get the delightful polka "Shall We Dance" out of the starting blocks.

The excess of schmaltzy sentiment needs muting, for to counteract it the leads are forced to overdo the cultural jokes and witty dialogue. The result is a two-dimensional exercise in pageantry and labored history that will engage you only minimally - there's a heap of impersonation, but not much acting.