R&H Return to Lincoln Center

In a day and age when producers, directors and author’s executors think nothing of imposing their so-called artistic vision on Broadway masterworks that were pretty good to begin with, it is heartening to see producers, directors and executors just do the show as written. Lincoln Center Theater and director Bartlett Sher had enormous success in 2008 with their carefully crafted recreation of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “South Pacific”, so they have now joined together to do the same with the fabled team’s “The King and I.” The results, at the Beaumont, leave us shaking our heads in wonderment at just how good this “Something Wonderful” musical is — although first time viewers are more likely to simply be swept away by the saga of Anna and the King of Siam. “This King and I” is excellent, although it does not soar quite so much as “South Pacific.” No matter; full value is given, and it’s a treasure to have the show back on the Broadway boards after a seventeen-year absence. The production has the epic sweep that the authors intended, along with all those songs. Mr. Sher and his leading players also investigate undercurrents of romance and physical attraction which were not evident in the original production. (Gertrude Lawrence, who enlisted Rodgers and Hammerstein to write the show for her, was twenty-three years older than her King, Yul Brynner.) Sher enhances these undercurrents, and has his actors act on them. This is not a left-field “improvement,” mind you; it is all very much supported in the text.