'She has the most glorious voice in musical theatre': Kelli and Ken to reunite in the West End for Rodgers and Hammerstein show The King And I

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Kelli O’Hara, America’s foremost interpreter of classic musicals, will make her West End debut starring in the landmark Rodgers and Hammerstein show The King And I.

The production, directed by Bartlett Sher, waltzes into the London Palladium for a season from June 21, 2018 (as this column was first to reveal).

It was a sensational success in New York, where it ran for 16 months until June last year. 

Kelli O’Hara, America’s foremost interpreter of classic musicals, will make her West End debut starring in the landmark Rodgers and Hammerstein show The King And I. She will reunite with Ken Watanabe (both pictured)

It collected four Tony trophies, including best musical revival and best actress in a musical for Kelli’s portrait of Anna Leonowens, who is hired to teach the royal children of the King of Siam.

She will reunite with Ken Watanabe (Inception, Letters From Iwo Jima). They were partners for the first five months of the run at New York’s famous Lincoln Center.

Watching them was wonderful. I thought I was done with revivals of The King And I until I saw Sher’s heartfelt production.

The Shall We Dance waltz scene between Anna and the King left audiences misty-eyed. Truth is, I’ve seen most of Ms O’Hara’s Broadway shows — from roles in Matthew Warchus’s Follies and Nicholas Hytner’s Sweet Smell Of Success to her collaborations with Sher in The Light In The Piazza, South Pacific, The Bridges Of Madison County, as well as The King And I.

The production, directed by Bartlett Sher, waltzes into the London Palladium for a season from June 21, 2018 (as this column was first to reveal)

She possesses, as Sher notes, ‘the most glorious voice of any soprano working in musical theatre today’. Sher relishes working with her because the magic happens when you join that voice ‘with this really powerful intelligence as an actor’.

He added: ‘The minute she starts singing is a whole other level.’

I recall bumping into Laurie Mansfield, the London agent, and his wife, after what must have been my third time at The King And I — Laurie’s seen everything, but even he was bowled over by O’Hara and the show.

By then, producer Howard Panter had begun looking for a London theatre — plus a tour of Asia, some of which, it’s hoped, O’Hara and Watanabe, 58, might do.

O’Hara, 41, speaking from New York where she’s preparing for a concert version of Brigadoon, approaches every show as if it were new — rather than reflecting on what has gone before. ‘I want to make the person a person. I feel strongly about trying not to be so much a personality.’

One thing she and Sher do so brilliantly is to root a classic show in its time and place, but to somehow make it resonate.

The show collected four Tony trophies, including best musical revival and best actress in a musical for Kelli’s portrait of Anna Leonowens, who is hired to teach the royal children of the King of Siam

‘When we did South Pacific, Barack Obama was running for president and it’s a story focused on race. When we were first doing The King And I, Hillary Clinton was running for president and we saw the chance to tell a story about feminism,’ she said, adding it was vital to show that little would have been achieved by ‘bullying’ the king in the show.

‘There’s no reality if she (Anna) comes in and bullies the king.

‘There’s only movement if she comes in and becomes a team mate of the king’s, earns his trust. She’s smarter doing it that way.’

The actress, married with two children aged four and eight, was raised in Elk City, Oklahoma, and embodies the sensibilities of America’s heartland.

She told me: ‘I love what I do. I perform on the stage and TV and so on and I love to put myself in there, but as a person I’m a mom, and I’m a wife and I’m a friend.’

Director Sher told me there’s a part of O’Hara in all of the roles she has played for him. ‘She will fight for what she believes in, powerfully. Love of family, hard work and caring for others.’

Tickets and more details soon via www.kingandimusical.co.uk.

Robert gets over his nerves with a disappearing act 

Sometimes Robert Pattinson has to sit down, stop being anxious and recite: ‘Just be yourself and accept you’re from Barnes.’

The actor knows the leafy district in South-West London well. It’s where he went to school, did a paper round and attended the local drama group, after which the Harry Potter and Twilight franchises propelled him to a kind of stardom he disdains.

He can’t escape those movies, even though over the past few years he has done his strongest work in a string of what he terms ‘provocative’ films. ‘I react quite strongly to people trying to put me in a box. I just want to try on a different persona.’

Sometimes Robert Pattinson has to sit down, stop being anxious and recite: ‘Just be yourself and accept you’re from Barnes’

To prepare for the role of a delusional robber trying to break his brother (played by Benny Safdie) from a guarded hospital room in the film Good Time, the director Josh Safdie had Pattinson roaming around New York trying to look like a loser.

They visited a city jail and Pattinson had his hair slicked back — and no one recognised him until he and Safdie reached the girls’ correctional section. ‘They were whooping “Edward, Edward,”’ Safdie recalled, as he uttered the name of Pattinson’s character in the Twilight series.

He fared better working in a car wash and he’d pop into a corner shop to purchase items in character. ‘I’d play around with words and you can tell instinctively whether people are buying what you’re saying. Then I go away and work on making my characterisation more convincing.’

Pattinson likes to disappear in a role, but Good Time is the real deal — a first-class disappearing act where he’s unrecognisable in a film that he totally dominates with a powerful, convincing performance. It’s one of my top-ten performances of the year.

Good Time was shown in Cannes back in May, but Pattinson was terrified before he arrived there. He worried that a plot line involving an actress playing a schoolgirl who becomes involved with Connie, Pattinson’s character, would create problems.

‘At the time of doing the film it felt pretty scary, but the relationship between Connie and Crystal has been cut down and I remember thinking I should make Connie rather asexual, which makes it OK, and I don’t know why I was so worried,’ he told me.

He said that after years of acting he has only recently become comfortable with it.

‘Even though I like doing it I get so much anxiety about performances. I try to calm myself and say, “Just be yourself and accept you’re from Barnes. Be real to yourself.”’

I told him to stop worrying and put all his anxiety and energy into his acting, which is what he has started to do.

He’s making a film with Claire Denis called High Life. ‘It’s about a bunch of death-row prisoners who get a chance to go into space and explore a black hole. It’s completely insane, which is fun.

‘We’re filming in Cologne and there are French and German crew and producers and there’s a lot of culture clash which I’m enjoying.’

It’s a pity that I don’t write reviews for the local paper in Barnes any more (I did about 100 years ago) because I would happily have told readers that their lad did good in Good Time.