'King and I' stars get to know each other

NEW YORK — During a recent preview performance of the new Broadway revival of The King and I, leading man Ken Watanabe almost tripped over leading lady Kelli O'Hara's gown.

The near-accident occurred during the famous number Shall We Dance?, in which O'Hara's character — an English widow who becomes governess and teacher to the King of Siam's large family — is guiding Watanabe's monarch across the floor.

"My dress weighs about 45 pounds, and he got his feet caught under it," recalls O'Hara, chatting with Watanabe in the lobby of LIncoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater, where the production opens April 16. "And he started to go down — but then he did a full back somersault and landed on his knees. The audience loved it. There were probably people who thought it was choreographed that way."

Offstage and on, the two make an unlikely couple. The blond, wholesomely beautiful O'Hara, who turns 39 next week, is a beloved Broadway veteran with five Tony nominations to her credit — including one for another Lincoln Center Theater revival of a Rodgers and Hammerstein classic, 2008's South Pacific.

Watanabe, 55, is a Japanese film star known to American audiences for his roles in such movies as Letters From Iwo Jima and The Last Samurai, which earned him an Oscar nomination. The King and I marks not only his first musical and the first time he's sung publicly, but "my first time acting onstage in English," says Watanabe, who at a few points during the interview consults a translator seated beside him.

The actor is one of 46 Asian cast members in the production, directed by Bartlett Sher, another South Pacific alum. Only five of the performers — among them OHara's standby, Betsy Morgan, and Jake Lucas, the young actor cast as Anna's son — are non-Asian.

Watanabe notes that rich roles have been less than abundant recently for Asian actors, on stage or screen. "About 15 years ago people in Hollywood had a lot of curiosity about Asia." He adds, "Now that the Chinese market has gotten so big that it can't be ignored, there is a tendency to base the story in China, film it in China or cast Chinese actors over other Asian actors."

Authenticity was important to Sher, say both of his leads, as was making the racial, cultural and gender conflicts in the 1951 musical fresh for a contemporary audience. Rodgers and Hammerstein based the show on Margaret Landon's Anna and the King of Siam, a novel inspired by the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, whom King Mongkut of Siam (now Thailand) enlisted in the 1860s to teach his children and wives.

"R&H would put these huge, important themes inside the mask of a musical," says O'Hara. "You have the issues of gender equality, of East meeting West, of colonization. ... The king is trying to work with the French and English as equals, to co-exist with them."

Watanabe was drawn to the notion of the king — a role made famous on stage and screen by Yul Brynner — "ruling a small country, asking, 'How can I survive in the world?' In the 21st century, we have situations like that, where the atmosphere is changing — in Scotland, in Catalonia, in the Ukraine."

O'Hara and Watanabe's fellow performers in The King and I include a number of children just entering that world, one only 6 years old. "We'll be going into the last scene of an evening show, at 10:45 or 10:50, and I'll see them yawning," says O'Hara, a mom of two herself. "And you think, 'My gosh, it's two or three hours past what a child's normal bedtime would be.'

"They are professionals, and we treat them with respect," O'Hara notes. "But there are times I just want to mother them, to hold them. I think some of them appreciate that — especially the little ones."