The King and I new adaptation — Page 2

Since Oscar wrote the book for the musical, and is ultimately responsible to any whom it may offend, I would offer a few words in his favor. In recent years it has become far more fashionable to find musical Anna to have had little to do with real Anna than to try to link them. Oscar's Anna is based on the Anna of the Margaret Landon’s 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam. Ms. Landon is accused of greatly fictionalizing the real Anna to add spice to her novel. This is hardly uncommon of novelists. And real Anna herself is accused of misrepresenting herself in her memoirs to be a gentile English lady from a good family who had been married to a British officer. Current wisdom holds her to be mixed British/Indian who had spent most of her life in India, not

When I think of Tom.
I think of a night,
When the earth smelled of summer
And the sky was streaked with white,
The soft mist of England
Was sleeping on a hill.

But it doesn't take a complex plot to support a good book. As long as the premise is strong. And here we have a highly educated and strong (some call real Anna a feminist) woman who is a subject of the British Empire. She journeys to Siam (with or without a child) to teach the King's children. The king is strong and virile and confident, unchallenged among his own people. His country is behind the West in education and the beginnings of the industrial revolution.

When Anna and King meet, I think their reaction to each other is very real. What does the King make of a mere woman, white-skinned, who is far more knowledgeable of nearly everything and who does not treat him with the respect he is used to. His is drawn to talking to and learning from the woman while at the same time afraid of looking inferior to her before his subjects.

Anna is attracted, at least intellectually, to the force of personality of this man to whom all subjects obey. She is only a little intimidated because she knows the greater intellect is hers.

With such a setup you have the elements for a great clash between two strong personalities.

I don't see much problematical about being treated to what I suppose you could call a classic battle of the sexes. The one part that grates is if the Siamese are not only inferior in knowledge, but also as a race. This should genuinely irritate those in Thailand should the audience be asked to believe that the English are a stronger and superior race.

I think that this is probably handled adequately by the "Western People Funny" number that begins the second act. The key here is one I have not spoken of: Lady Chiang. The chief wife is not the strongest or the best educated but she is the wisest member of the King's court. Leading the other women in the song, she is convincing with her mild ridicule of the Europeans and that should satisfy most of the audience.

darquegk said: "I believe the historical Anna Leonowens was mixed race, assumed to be Indian or Southeast Asian and British."

True, but irrelevant.. And at any rate, none of those races she was a mixture of were Asian.

The show is a classic, and Hammerstein was a progressive. But should a remake occur, it would face stinging criticism. I don't think Hammerstein or anyone else at the time grasped the racist subtext imbedded in the show. Hammerstein saw the story as one about a liberal and a conservative battling it out despite their love for each other, and the need for the liberal progressive to win, and he wasn't thinking of the racial implications, at all, nor of the racism (and flat out lies) in Anna Leonowens original account.

I'm going to have to disagree with you there, based mainly on the evidence presented by all the productions of this show at every level that have drawn no such criticism. The last major Broadway revival starring Donna Murphy was only ten years prior to the LCT production, won eight Tony awards and ran for 200 more performances than Kelli and Company.

In Wikipedia the list of actresses who have played Anna is almost astonishing. Jan Clayton (Carousel), Barbara Cook, Celeste Holm, Angela Lansbury, Kelli O'Hara, Marin Mazzie, Faith Prince, Elaine Paige -- the list goes on and on.

I don't think that Oscar saw the confrontation between the two as political, assigning to them the roles of liberal and conservative. Those labels were not so commonly used to pin labels on people as they are used today. I think that Barry Goldwater was responsible for popularizing the conservative label. I think Oscar just saw this as a fascinating encounter between a man and a woman unlike each other in almost every way. Let each win a few points.. Let the sparks fly.

But you are right that his progressive self was concerned about the appearance of the show being a put-down of a "backward race" and he took care to include "Western People Funny" in a prominent spot to avoid this appearance.