This 'King' has an 'I'
Maureen McGovern pours herself into Anna
By Chris Jones
Maureen McGovern stars as Anna in "The King and I."
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When Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's "The King and I" opened on Broadway in 1951, the name of Gertrude Lawrence appeared above the title. But for anyone who saw this musical at any one of the 4,652 New York performances by the definitive King of Siam, or the seemingly endless sequence of tours that criss-crossed this country for the four decades that followed, the character of Mrs. Anna did not much matter. All that counted was Yul Brynner, the late, bald-headed and stentorian actor with the most famous bare chest in show business.
"Towards the end of Brynner's reign, the show had become a complete circus," says Christopher Renshaw, the British-born director of the much-admired 1996 Broadway revival of the beloved musical. "He didn't even look at the Anna all night."
Perhaps by virtue of necessity (Brynner was hardly a replaceable type), Renshaw's revival has firmly put the "I" back into the show's title. Ever since this new production began its life in Australia, then moved to New York, and especially since it went out on the road without Broadway star Lou Diamond Phillips, the marquee name has always been female.
That will still be the case now that this touring show has finally reached Chicago (long after playing virtually every other major market in the country). Even though the Chicago performances will be the last city for this company, which disbands after closing here at the Auditorium Theatre in July, a new Anna just joined the show a couple of weeks ago. Best known for her recordings in the 1970s (many of which were spinoffs from movie scores), Maureen McGovern has made a lucrative recent career from appearing as a guest artist at the "Pops" concerts of virtually every major symphony orchestra in the country.
"I have gone to the trouble of learning Anna for a short time," she said on the morning before her Los Angeles opening, "because this is a role I've been wanting to play all my life."
In cities up and down America, they've seen a veritable cornucopia of star actresses, all playing very different versions of Anna Leonowens, whose memoirs were the inspiration for Margaret Landon, the author of "Anna and the King of Siam," the novel that subsequently became a 1946 movie and then the Broadway musical.
The list includes Hayley Mills ("a very British and stoic Anna," says Renshaw, listing off the assorted qualities of his various actresses); Faith Prince ("the funniest Anna"); Donna Murphy ("an Anna with a past and a sadness lurking beneath her"); and Marie Osmond ("a very spunky Anna").
And what of McGovern? "She sings the role better than anyone else," says Renshaw, "And she's an Anna with a will." And although Vee Talmadge, who has played the King of Siam opposite all the above women, would not directly be so impolite, one suspects he also prefers McGovern's newly minted incarnation to all of her predecessors.
"Maureen's version of Anna is very grounded, solid and stable," Talmadge says. "It's a dynamic that seems to work very well with what I do."
McGovern clearly enjoys talking about how Anna was a progressive woman, albeit one trapped in a Victorian milieu. "This was a single parent raising her child in a foreign country," McGovern says. "She was a feminist for her day."
Other progressive changes in Renshaw's show include a cast that, for the most part, is Asian and a design scheme that is more egalitarian.
"If you look at original designs," McGovern said, "Brynner's costume was very colorful and everybody else looked drab in comparison. That's not the case here."
Still, the songs remain the same. And for a vocalist long associated with and admired by such classic American popular composers and lyricists as Alan and Marilyn Bergman, Michel Legrand and Marvin Hamlisch, that's still the main attraction.
"At a time when the good American song is an exception," McGovern says, "this show is an embarrassment of riches."
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Jones is a Chicago freelance writer.
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