  PREVIEW: 'The King & I,'
starring Hayley Mills, presented by Celebrity Attractions By James
D. Watts Jr. World Entertainment Writer 1/11/98
When: 8 p.m. Wednesday and Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Thursday and
Saturday, 2 and 7:30
p.m. Sunday
Where: Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa Performing Arts Center, Third Street
and Cincinnati
Avenue
Tickets: Tickets are extremely limited; call the PAC ticket office,
596-7111 for
availability
It has been almost 40 years since Hayley Mills became a star, in such
Disney films as
"Pollyanna" and "The Parent Trap."
And for some fans, that particular star has never dimmed.
"It's really quite extraordinary -- and quite wonderful, I must say
-- that people
remember those old movies with such affection," Mills said. "I'm always
meeting people
here in America who know me from those films, and it's like encountering
old friends --
they are just so warm and welcoming."
Mills has had plenty of opportunity of late to have such encounters.
Since April
she has been touring the United States with the new, lavish production
of "The King &
I," Rodgers and Hammerstein's beloved musical.
The production comes to Tulsa for eight performances beginning
Wednesday at the
Tulsa Performing Arts Center. "The King & I" is a part of Celebrity
Attractions' "Give
Your Regards to Broadway" series.
This is the same production that swept the 1996 Tony Awards, where it
starred Donna
Murphy and Lou Diamond Phillips (the current Broadway cast features
Marie Osmond and
Kevin Gray).
It certainly promises to be the most lavish Broadway show to come to
town since
"The Phantom of the Opera." It takes 10 trucks to transport the sets and
costumes from
town to town.
"Oh yes, we're a regular little army when we're on the road," Mills
said, laughing.
She was speaking by phone from Denver, where the company had taken up
residence for
most of the month of December.
"There's 75 of us all told, the actors, the orchestra, and all the
children have
their parents with them. It's just daunting, the sheer size of this. And
somehow we
all manage to appear in the same place at the right time, and the
curtain goes up, and
we have this show."
This show is the most enduring version of a story that dates back to
the 1870s,
when Anna Leonowens published two memoirs of her life in Siam -- "A
British Governess
in the Siamese Court" and "Romance of the Harem." The books were based
on the five
years Leonowens spent tutoring all 70 or so of the royal children.
Although Leonowens' books provided Western readers with their first
glimpse of the
life and culture of this Asian country, some considered her account of
life in the
Siam court considerably embellished.
In 1943, Margaret Landon, who herself had spent a decade in Siam,
published a novel
called "Anna and the King of Siam," which drew heavily on Leonowens'
books. It was
filmed in 1946 with Irene Dunne and Rex Harrison in the title roles.
The film prompted actress Gertrude Lawrence to seek out Landon's
novel, and she
bought the rights to turn it into a musical. She first approached Cole
Porter, who
turned her down, then Rodgers and Hammerstein, who also turned her down.
However,
Lawrence persisted and composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar
Hammerstein II took
on the project.
The resulting musical, now titled "The King and I," opened in 1951,
and made a star
of the unknown actor playing the King, Yul Brynner. Brynner became
inextricably linked
with the role of the King, playing it in film, on TV (a short-lived CBS
series
co-starring Samantha Eggar) and more than 4,600 times on stage.
"The King and I" has returned to Broadway numerous times -- at least
once a decade.
Yet the version that now is running in New York, and which inspired the
current
touring production, came to America via a circuitous route.
Director Christopher Renshaw first created this "King and I" -- one
that tries to
balance gilt-drenched spectacle with a more sophisticated and truthful
portrait of what is now
Thailand -- in 1991 in Australia. And the person he chose to play Anna
was Hayley
Mills.
"It just came out of the blue," Mills recalled. "I had done theater
in past, even
did some musical things, but nothing on this scale. And it's a very
physically and
emotionally demanding role -- you've got six songs, lots of dancing and
carrying on,
and when you aren't on stage, you're changing costumes."
However, Mills met those challenges in such a way that the Australian
production caught the attention of the Rodgers and Hammerstein
Organization in New York City.
Mary Rodgers, daughter of Richard Rodgers, came to Australia to see the
production and was so taken by it that she began working on bringing the
show to the United States.
The current tour, which began in April, has been something of a
comeback experience for Mills. Although she has worked more or less
steadily since her debut in the 1959 film "Tiger Bay," much of that work
has been on the stage in England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, in
films that rarely crossed the Atlantic, or in TV productions ("The Flame
Trees of Thika," seen here on PBS' "Masterpiece Theater") that did.
There was a time, however, when Hayley Mills seemed to be everywhere,
from movie screens to magazine covers to paper dolls. However, Mills
said, all the adulation she received from her early movies was strictly
an American phenomenon and one from which she felt herself removed,
since she only came to this country to make the films.
Mills started doing stage work as a way, she said, of "taking charge
of my life at last" -- a life that, with its various personal and
romantic upheavals, provided fodder for the British tabloid press.
"To go on stage after spending 12 years in front of cameras was a
pretty scary experience," she recalled. "My acting up to that time had
been more or less instinctive, so I was learning as I went along. And I
know I made some horrendous mistakes along the way.
"But I quickly realized that core of what you do as an actor remains
the same, whether in film or on the stage," she said. "On stage,
however, you have to have a kind of sixth sense about the space in which
you work, that you have to use your whole being to express a thought or
emotion."
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