Did the King and I in the West End whistle the critics?

Daisy Bowie-Sell, WhatsOnStage

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●● shine and glide, she vogue glamor "

" It would not be an exaggeration to say that Kelli O 'Hara is made for this part, her actress talents and her delicate yet rich voice combine to give Anna's engaging compassion.By listening to her songs – the majority of them are hers -, Ken Watanabe, who debuts in the West End here (actually both of them), is not a great singer, but his King is He's a bit too funny, sharp and betrays moments of convincing vulnerability, he does a little too much in his main song "A Puzzlement", and steers in the melodrama. 19659004] "The Niggles aside, it's very hard not to fall King and me which presents some of the most beautiful songs of the musical theater, here sung by an absolutely crack casting. "I Whistle has Happy Tune" is a happy worm of the ear, "Hello Young Lovers" goes up in sadness and "Getting to Know You" is an optimistic tribute to find a ground of mutual understanding and respect . "

Ann Treneman, Times

★★★★★

" Book now. It's a success. Japanese movie star Ken Watanabe was apparently nervous when she was approached by Bartlett Sher, the director, to play the King. I can not think why. It is a power station. (I was looking at him, I thought: Yul who?) Watanabe makes us see (and feel) the conflicts of a man whose status is almost god but who knows that change must come. "Barbarous!" he cries when he hears what other countries are saying about his kingdom and proposes to prove the opposite. "

" Kelli O 'Hara not only plays Anna, she has the role. Her voice is crystalline, Julie Andrews is perfect, and as she sings her first song, which is rather annoying "Whistle a Happy Tune", you've just merged in this cover of the musical Rodgers and Hammerstein in 1951. He won a series of Tony Awards in New York in 2015 and now the show, including the main stars, has come to the West End. "

Paul Taylor, The Independent

★★★ ★

" This script, which restores some lines of a discarded draft, makes the character's political situation more pronounced. Should he open his country to progress, or throw a wall around him as protection against the colonial designs of the British and the French? "

" The production has a distribution of 51, featuring the excellent Naoko Mori as the head of the king wife (her delightful and dazzling version of "Something wonderful" is precisely that one) and Na- Young Jeon who is piercing vulnerable like Tuptim, the girl who is sent to Mongkut as a gift from the King of Burma. "

" But Sher puts it on stage so that, instead of looking like naïve children, the choir of Siamese women offers an aggressive and aggressive critique of Western appropriation: "They feel so sentimental / About l & # 39; East … "[19659004"Mêmesijen'aijamaissentiqu'ilyavaitbeaucoupdeparentéentrelesdeuxprotagonistesdel'histoireO'HaraquiaremportéunTonyAwardpoursaperformanceestundéliceEllesuggèreunefemmequiestàlafoisfougueuseetdouceetquinonseulementénoncechaquesyllabedeseschansonsmaislesinvestitd'émotionJen'aijamaisentendu"HelloYoungLovers"mieuxinterprété:Quando'Haraannonce"jesaiscequec&#39isqued"tobeonthestandards"alightentershis/hereyesassoonashe/shepassed"

Michael Billington, The Guardian

★★★

" But l & # 39; focus on the royal insecurity and the threat to the integrity of Siam does not f To complicate matters, I found myself asking a simple question: why on earth would Mrs. Leonowens want to stay? If there is one thing worse than a despot, which the king is undoubtedly, it is a neurotic despot. "

" In a mainly Asian cast, Na-Young Jeon has a good job of renegade lover and Naoko Mori like Michael Yeargan's colorful designs, the king's head, avoid a false exoticism and rock band , under Stephen Ridley, plays excellently well. The musical itself, however, remains a problem to be solved as much as a show to be appreciated. "

Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph

★★★★

" It was last in the Palladium in 2000, with Elaine Paige. In this production, directed by Bartlett Sher from New York, Kelli O 'Hara, transfixuously possessed and serenely smiling, faces the severe but ever-threatening presence of Ken Watanabe's hips on the hips. Roles made famous by Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner, Oscar winner, in the 1956 film. "

" In short, the whole affair offers a satisfying mix of emphasis and subtlety. Many songs remain transcendent adorable, chief among them "I Whistle a Happy Tune", "Hello, Young Lovers", "Learn to Know You", and this invitation to polka "Shall We Dance?". They are exquisitely sung by O & # 39; Hara, resuming her winning performance Tony. Beyond these classics, other forms of sophistication abound and the second part opens with the Western People Funny (often excised), in which the royal women try to wear western panties and chuckle. with the idea that these machines mean cultural superiority. "

Tim Bano, The Scene

★★★★

" When Christopher Renshaw relaunched the show in Australia in 1991, he insisted that, for the first time, all Asian roles were played by Asian actors. With Filipino actor Tony Marinyo in the title role, picked up by Lou Diamond Phillips on Broadway a few years later, the musical has turned out to be relatively sophisticated in its portrayal of two cultures that meet. "

" Na-Young Jeon's rendering of "My Lord and Master" brings out the dark side of the Mongkut regime. As a concubine of Mongkut Tuptim, his anxious face and his flighty movements show a life lived in fear and possessed by a man that she does not like. "

His narrative of the ballet" Uncle Tom's Cabin "in Act Two is powerful, as is his ensemble with his choreography of Jerome Robbins, a beautiful interlude of 20 minutes that synthesizes cultures eastern and western. "