THE Magazine - Dallas / Forthworth

Rogers and Hammerstein's popular musical The King and I has been fully restored to it's original stage show and will premiere in North Texas with a 35-piece orchestra playing the original Robert Russell Bennett orchestrations. For many years, the Rogers and Hammerstein Organization has been tracking down and examining the original Broadway scripts, scores, and instrumental parts that have been missing for some fifty years. For King, their first musical based on a true story, Rodgers and Hammerstein turned to the popular novel Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon, which was based on the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, a nineteenth-century Englishwoman who became governess to the children of the King of Siam. When the play originally opened at Broadway's St. James Theater in 1951, it ran for three years and won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical. Star Yul Brenner eventually played the same role in the film version in 1956.