Continuing our new, soon-to-be-discontinued tradition of reviewing 
shows that have already closed, it's time to look back at GCP's 
production of The King and I--the classic musical written by....um, 
let me just check the cover of the program for a second........
hmmm, well the names of the authors don't seem to be listed on the 
cover of the program, but it does say in a good-sized font that the 
show was "Designed and Directed by William J. Eyerly, Jr," so that's 
probably the information that really matters.

Anyway, The King And I is the classic story of Anna Leonowens, an 
English woman who travels to Siam to teach the King's stable of 
children and comes to learn that--despite their differences--all of 
them are the same deep down.  Specifically, all of them are really, 
really, REALLY white....

Fortunately, the lead characters in the show are good, as are a few 
of the supporting characters; but after that, the talent curve takes 
a sharp downward drop.  Janice Kaplan as Anna is good--not 
necessarily great, but still good.  She tended to lose too much 
volume on some of the higher songs, but her acting was fine, as was 
her English accent.  Bobby McAfee as the King also does a respectable 
job.  I don't think he completely nailed the Asian accent, but he got 
close enough to be convincing, especially compared to the rest of the 
cast.

Gayla Vidal as Tuptim did very well, and Jimmy Resczenski as Anna's 
son Louis wasn't bad.  Apart from them, the ensemble cast was just 
not very good.  The singing was very good, but most of the ensemble 
cast seemed to fall into one of two categories:

-Can sing well, but can't act at all
-Can sing well , can sort of act, but not in an Asian accent.

It made me think that people were cast in this show based solely on 
their singing ability--which works fine for a chorus, I suppose, but 
not for major supporting roles.  Admittedly, I wasn't at the 
auditions, so I don't know what the director had to work with; but 
the way it turned out just did not work at all.  You had a couple 
people who could do the Asian accent, some who tried to do it and 
failed, and some who didn't bother trying at all.  And truly, there 
was at least one person--I won't mention any names--in a major 
supporting role whose acting was just plain bad.

Just to clarify, I'm not saying every single person in the ensemble 
cast was bad.  There were quite a few whom I have no opinion on, 
because they didn't do enough to be especially noticeable.  Plus, 
there were a lot of kids in the show whose main function was 
basically as set pieces.  The one kid who did anything was the 
King's oldest son, who was perhaps too authentic, because he seemed 
to be speaking some language I didn't understand.  Although this 
probably didn't matter to 95% of the theatre-going public, who 
inexplicably equate cuteness with quality.

Despite what you may be thinking by now, it was not a horrible show.  
Most of the action centered around the leads, who were pretty good.  
And the show itself is decent through the first act, though it starts 
to go downhill in Act II, which featured a play-within-a-play based 
on Uncle Tom's Cabin where white children wear black-children masks 
that actually offended a black person I was standing near who is not 
easily offended.  I was offended, too, but that was mostly because 
the whole play-within-a-play scene was inane and wasted about 15 
minutes of my life that I'll never get back.

Final Verdict:  GCP's The King And I was a decent show with good 
leads that suffers from a subpar supporting cast.  If it were still 
playing, I'd say it might be worth a couple hours of your time, 
although I don't know that it would be worth the 10 bucks to get in.
Not that it would've mattered, since I think the show pretty much 
sold out most of the time.  Go figure.  One day, when I'm overly 
rich, I'm going to build my own theatre and endow it with enough 
money to be able to put on entire seasons of shows that didn't have 
movies based on them.  I don't know how I'll get the money yet, but I 
do know that the theatre won't be built anywhere near 
Gainesville.....

-john