The touring company of "The King and I" -- the Tony-Award- winning revival of the famous Broadway show of the 1950s -- has brought some incredibly lavish sets to the Merriam Theater for a six-day, eight-performance booking that starts tomorrow night.
To give you an idea: One scene features 14 30-foot gold-tiled, bejeweled statues of elephants.

The production requires 240 costumes -- many covered with sequins and beads. Leading lady Hayley Mills wears four gowns, each with its own four- to six-foot crinoline.

All this, plus other scenery and furniture, fills 10 trucks.

Isn't that a lot of expensive unpacking for something that will be around for only six days?

No problem, says Joyce Friedman, spokeswoman for New York City's Dodger Touring, which handles the tour's bookings and marketing.

"The staging for the tour is just as elaborate as it is in New York -- and that's not always true," she said. "But these sets have been specifically built to travel."

Broadway is used to costumes with Velcro closings that enable the leading lady to change for the next scene in seconds. This is the scenery equivalent.

"Philadelphia isn't unusual in booking 'The King and I' for a one-week run," Friedman adds. "That's the case in many cities. Tour bookings tend to vary between one week and five. The decision is up to the local promoter" -- in this case, Sam l'Hommedieu, president of the Theater League of Philadelphia, which operates the Merriam.

One-week runs are the norm at the Merriam, which is one of only two theaters in Philadelphia large enough to accommodate a show this lavish, according to Friedman. (The other is the Forrest.)

The Forrest, renovated this year, is where you usually find long-running shows, but it's closed more weeks than it's open. For example, a touring production of another Broadway revival, "Showboat," played at the Forrest from Nov. 12 to Jan. 3. But the next scheduled show -- the tap dance musical "Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk" -- won't arrive until April 27. It will stay three weeks.

Short runs and a theater that is often dark do not make Philadelphia sound like the major theater town Avenue of the Arts promoters would like it to be.

DeVida Jenkins, manager of the Merriam, says Philadelphia doesn't lack theater fans. Its problem, she says, is that it's so close to New York, many of those fans will have seen the show there before it arrives here.

But most of the shows that do come here do well, she says.

Musicals are much more costly to mount than a straight play, but the Forrest and Merriam are large theaters -- larger than most on Broadway.

"The King and I" cost $5.5 million to produce on Broadway. It costs more than a half-million dollars to bring it to Philadelphia, says Andrea Rounds, president of Dodger Touring.

The Merriam can seat 1,870 people at a single performance. And at prices ranging from $27.50 to $69.50, depending on day and location, that can provide a tidy return.

The Theater League's l'Hommedieu likes short runs because it enables him to offer a series of shows that theater patrons will want to buy a subscription to in advance. That provides a stable income, he has said.

According to Jenkins, this year the league has signed up 3,900 subscribers. That's only 26 percent of the total seats available during the run of "The King and I," but Jenkins says that so far this year the Merriam has had little trouble filling the remainder.

Since its fall season was launched in October, six different productions have appeared there, for five days to a week.

"Chita & All That Jazz," a revue starring Chita Rivera, ended its six-day run just nine days before "The King and I" took over the Merriam stage.

"And we had a gospel show on stage between them," Jenkins said.

The Merriam, which was completely renovated in the 1980s, is also used for dance performances and for University of the Arts student productions.

Andrea Rounds points out that there are many factors that determine how long a show runs. "Some Broadway producers like to promote their own show on the road, and that tends to generate longer runs," she said.

But either way, Rounds added, road-company tours are financially important to the production company that launched the Broadway production. "Many shows only recoup their backer's initial investment by touring."

The original "King and I," with score by Oscar Hammerstein and music by Richard Rodgers, opened on Broadway in 1951.

The current version, first staged in Australia, won the Tony Award for best musical revival in 1996. Australians Roger Kirk, who designed the costumes, and Brian Thomas, who designed the sets, also won Tonys for their categories.

According to Dodger's Friedman, Mary Rodgers, the composer's daughter, saw the production in Australia, "fell in love with it" and brought it to Broadway.