Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 20, 1995 TAG: 9506210013
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE/STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The Mill Mountain production - starring Philippines native Tony Marinyo, who has played the role in Australia - will signal the end of associate director Zulia's official association with the theater. It spans seven years and also includes directing credits on "42nd Street," "To Kill a Mocking bird" and "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat."
Zulia is leaving to work with Robert Fulghum, whose "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" Zulia has adapted to the stage, and to pursue other theater projects.
The 42-year-old director first saw "The King and I" (starring, of course, Brynner) at a drive-in theater in Akron, Ohio.
He was 10.
"It made an enormous impression on me," Zulia said. "I just remember this extraordinary place the movie took you to."
He believes
the play "captures something about human nature that no other play does. It's the kind of play where you cry at the end - you have to cry at the end - because it's been so carefully crafted to bring people to a catharsis. ...I think `King and I' stands up with all the great works of theater."
Marinyo - the Mill Mountain king - starred as the king of Siam opposite actress Hayley Mills in an Australian production of the play in 1991-92. With his bald pate, he looks a lot like Brynner himself - only maybe shorter.
The role of Anna Leonowens - the English governess who spent seven years in Siam as tutor to the crown prince in the 1860s, and whose writings about her experiences were the inspiration for "The King and I" - will be played by Barbara
McCulloh. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the College of William and Mary, McCulloh studied Shakespeare in England and has appeared in a number of the Bard's plays in American regional theater productions.
She appears sometimes in the soap opera "Another World," as Caroline Griffin.
Mill Mountain Theatre has also worked to bring out the multi-ethnic character of the script through its casting. Thus, the play will feature a gaggle or two of kids drawn largely from the area's Asian community, in the role of the king's many children.
The second - and final - play of Mill Mountain's summer season also is a musical, "Forever Plaid." A joint venture between four theaters - Mill Mountain Theatre, Abingdon's Barter Theatre, the Wayside Theatre of Middletown and the Charlotte Repertory Theatre - "Forever Plaid" is about four musicians who are killed by a bus while on the way to pick up plaid tuxedoes to wear at their first concert.
Due to the powers of harmony in conjunction with the holes in the ozone layer - or something like that - the four are enabled to come back to earth just long enough to complete the gig.
"It is a hilarious show," Mill Mountain Theatre Director Jere Lee Hodgin said of "Plaid," which also will be performed at the other theaters in the partnership. Splitting the burden of production among four theaters allows them to pool their resources and thereby create a better product, Hodgin believes. Mill Mountain Theatre is providing the costumes and did the casting for "Plaid." Charlotte Repertory did most of the legal work and is providing transportation. The Wayside Theatre designed the sets, and the Barter Theatre built them.
The play by Stuart Ross runs Aug. 4-27.
"Plaid" makes the third musical in four plays performed on Mill Mountain's main stage since the first of the year. Dating back to October's "Always...Patsy Cline," five of six main stage plays have been musicals. (The exception was February's "Romeo and Juliet.")
Though Mill Mountain has long emphasized musical theater, Hodgin said it has emphasized it this year more than most.
"It just worked out that way," Hodgin said, noting the theater canceled a scheduled production of "I Hate Hamlet" last month to make room for Broadway star Donna McKechnie's evolving musical autobiography, "Inside the Music."
Hodgin said three of five productions on the theater's main stage next season will be musicals.
Zulia said the focus on musicals reflects the market.
"Audiences love them. And musical theater has a voice that is so uniquely powerful, it is easy to devote your craft to it," he said.
Especially "The King and I."
"I've never really been interested in directing any of the Rodgers and Hammerstein plays except for this," Zulia said. "It's a show about cultures colliding. That has even more relevance today. ... She [Anna Leonowens] is the only Western thing is this whole world [of old Siam]."
In some ways, the play about a character confronting the unknown is a fitting end to Zulia's personal run as associate director of Mill Mountain Theatre. His post-Mill Mountain plans include taking "Kindergarten" to the Czech Republic, as well as helping to revive an ancient amphitheater in Crete.
All of us have to be ready for change in our lives, believes Zulia - or be left behind. "Because the world will change around us," he said.
"The King and I" will be presented on Mill Main Theatre's Main Stage from Friday through July 16. A review of the play will appear in Friday Extra. For tickets, call 342-5740.
by CNB