REVIEW: THE KING AND I, Royal Albert Hall, June 13th 2009

It's a show full of old-fashioned charm, and will always have a certain box office appeal. The aesthetic glamour of the Royal Albert Hall seems a good match for the lavishness of the Siam court. On the face of it, The King and I couldn't fail.

And indeed, this version - directed by Jeremy Sams - is lovely in many ways. The magnetic Maria Friedman makes a marvellous Anna, exuding warmth, confidence and maternal instinct. Daniel Dae Kim delivers his majestic comic lines well, and has a surprisingly melodic singing voice (though somewhat youthful-sounding for the role).  The set in the round, incorporating a water feature, is impressive; the wives are beautiful; the children are adorable; the orchestra under the baton of Gareth Valentine are excellent.

And yet it doesn't quite hang together. Partly, this is down to the venue.  The Royal Albert Hall, for all its qualities, is a dreadful choice acoustically for musical theatre - unless your diction is spot-on your words get swallowed up no matter how loudly you sing (as the cast of Chess In Concert found last year).  Performing in the round meant that when Anna ministered to the dying King in the final scene, her torso blocked the view, and so her actions and then his death were totally lost. The audience's bad manners were astounding, as were the ushers' responses - latecomers shown to their seats in the middle of a scene, people wandering out again, ushers whispering very loudly. And to top it all off, as the actors used the aisles to get to the stage, the meandering audience members had to be moved out of the way and the ushers whispered a little more.

Partly, though, there are some production errors that will doubtless be tweaked during the run. For starters, Prince Chululongkorn's accent needs to be modulated to fit in with the rest of the court. Tuptim and Lun Tha's duet I Have Dreamed suffers with some dreadful positioning, making what is supposed to be a romantic interlude look awkward and cliched.  In fact, much of Act Two feels slightly leaden for various reasons, but primarily because the King's terrifying and awesome majesty doesn't quite ring true, meaning that suspension of disbelief is harder than normal.

The King and I is certainly worth seeing, if just to catch Maria Friedman in one of her sadly increasingly infrequent musical theatre engagements. And the beauty of the surroundings will stick in your memory, even if the production itself doesn't.

Rating * * *