King and I

Directed and Choreographed by
JIM HUTCHISON

Musical Direction by
DAREN KIMURA

Set Design by
TOM GIZA

Costume Design by
KATHY KOHL

Lighting Design by
JOHN PARKINSON

CAST (in order of appearance)
Captain Orton - DANIEL JAMES KUNKEL
Louis Leonowens - CAMERON CROWELL-SCHOCH
Anna Leonowens - TINA SHELTON
The Interpreter - ERIC GUDOY
The Kralahome - JOHN TOLENTINO
The King - RAY BUMATAI
Phra Alack - LARRY FUKUMOTO
Lun Tha - ELITEI TATAFU, JR.
Tuptim - SHERRY CHOCK WONG
Lady Thiang - CHERYL TOMA SANDERS
Prince Chululongkorn - MICHAEL ZACHARY YASUNAGA
Princes Ying Yaowlak - TAYLOR ANN KATASE
Sir Edward Ramsay - AVAMUA DE WATTVILLE DE BERKHEIM
The Royal Princesses and Princes
NICK RAVEN ALEJO, CHAD AU, KATHRYN AGASID ESTEBAN,
KELLI L. HALL, ALEXANDER LIHOLIHO UEHARA IOKEPA, TAYLOR ANN KATASE,
ELLEN MINKIN, LAURA OKAZAKI, RACHEL RICHARDSON
VERONICA RICHARDSON, PHILIP-ANDREW YUEN
The Royal Slave Dancers - NATALIA ANDREA, ELLEN MINKIN,
STEPHANIE K. WONG, EMILY YAMASHITA, TIFFANY YOSHIDA
Priests - LARRY FUKUMOTO, ERIC GUDOY, TIMOTHY K. S. YUEN
The Royal Wives - NATALIA ANDREA, TONI CHONG,
VIDA MAE FERNANDEZ, SUSAN KOONTZ, SARA LAM,
KRYSTAL LIN, CHERYL "CHE" PALILEO, LYDIA ROLEN
KIMBERLEIGH PETERS VILLASENOR, STEPHANIE K. WONG,
TIFFANY YOSHIDA, PAM YUEN
Nurses - TONI CHONG, VIDA MAE FERNANDEZ, KATIE GRAY,
SUSAN KOONTZ, LYDIA ROLEN, NATALIA VASQUEZ, EMILY YAMASHITA

SMALL HOUSE OF UNCLE THOMAS BALLET
Uncle Thomas - KRYSTAL LIN
Little Eva - NATALIA VASQUEZ
Little Topsy - NATALIA ANDREA
Eliza - EMILY YAMASHITA
Simon of Legree - ELLEN MINKIN
Angel/George - CHERYL TOMA SANDERS
Buddha - LAURA OKAZAKI
Dogs - CHAD AU, AVAMUA DE WATTVILLE DE BERKHEIM, ERIC GUDOY
Dance Ensemble - KATHRYN AGASID ESTEBAN, LARRY FUKUMOTO, KATIE GRAY,
DANIEL JAMES KUNKEL, ELLEN MINKIN, ELITEI TATAFU JR., JOHN TOLENTINO,
STEPHANIE K. WONG, TIFFANY YOSHIDA, PHILIP-ANDREW YUEN, TIMOTHY K. S. YUEN

The Honolulu Advertiser
November 20, 2004
STAGE REVIEW

Beautiful designs help bring 'King and I' to life

By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Advertiser Drama Critic

Ray Bumatai and Tina Shelton Rodgers and Hammerstein's "The King and I" has a sumptuous look in the new Army Community Theatre production.

Set designer Tom Giza has produced a show curtain suitable for framing, a solid throne room trimmed in gold, and a palace garden by moonlight that draws sighs from the audience.

The elegant and exotic style is a good match for this 50-year-old musical set in mysterious Asia, where a stubborn, young widowed schoolteacher confronts an equally stubborn despot King. It's filled with an excessive number of sprightly songs like "I Whistle a Happy Tune" and "Getting to Know You" and soulful, introspective melodies like "Something Wonderful" — all now American classics.

Musical director Daren Kimura pulls out this musical richness with an excellent large orchestra and a cast of principal performers who can individually carry all the sad and happy tunes in the show.

With his shaved head and barrel chest, Ray Bumatai is a physically commanding presence as the King of Siam, torn between royal prerogative and the need to protect his small country on the competitive world stage.

He also adds the right mix of playful humor to balance his imperious stature and a bit of sly cunning to show he's more than a blend of despot and buffoon. His disintegration at being unable to whip the disloyal Tuptim is chillingly believable when the plot calls for it.

Tina Shelton as Anna is gracious and lovely in the Deborah Kerr mode. She has a pretty though not notably strong voice, and brings the necessary civility to a character who unknowingly brings down a regime by simply trying to help.

Her "Hello Young Lovers" has the right personal undercurrent, and her subliminal attraction to the King is sensed without becoming a torrid psychological undercurrent.

But when Bumatai locks her into a close embrace for the waltz sequence, "Shall We Dance" becomes more than an up-tempo number.

It's also a physical and mental release allowing the characters to expend sexual energy in a safe way. Jim Hutchison's choreography takes them around the throne room while — psychically — they're whirling across the walls and ceiling.

Supporting roles are also well cast.

John Tolentino is appropriately gruff and aloof as the Kralahome and Cheryl Toma Sanders brings a lovely voice and queenly presence to Lady Thiang. Sherry Chock Wong and Elitei Tatafu Jr. look and sound appropriate as the young lovers and their duet on "We Kiss in a Shadow" has all the right longing and poignancy.

Colorful Victorian and Siamese gowns complete the exotic look. One might only wish for more children in the cast.


Honolulu Star Bulletin
Monday, November 29, 2004

Cast does justice to
Broadway favorite

By John Berger

There are good reasons why Broadway classics such as "The King & I" continue to be restaged year after year nationwide while the earnest efforts of most local playwrights play once, maybe twice, then are filed and forgotten. Rodgers and Hammerstein's ever-popular musical take on the real-life adventures of English schoolteacher Anna Leonowens in 19th-century Thailand, for instance, combines strong characters, catchy melodies, memorable lyrics and a compelling story in ways that engage the heart and mind.

"The King & I" is a marvelous piece of American musical theater, and Army Community Theatre director/choreographer Jim Hutchison and his talented cast do justice to it with ACT's latest revival.

Tina Shelton looks and sounds the part of the prim but steely widowed teacher who travels to Bangkok to become governess and teacher to the king's children and wives.

Ray Bumatai is taking on a much more difficult task in playing the role that was defined for all time by Yul Brynner on Broadway and in the Academy Award-winning film, but he succeeds in making the character his own. Although he spoke at times with a pidgin inflection in the first few scenes, Bumatai was thoroughly likable as a troubled monarch trying to deal with change. Other characters speak of the king's weaknesses, but Bumatai's performance shows a man shrewder and more cunning than he appears.

Bumatai embraces the role musically with his first big number, "A Puzzlement," just as Shelton does with "Hello Young Lovers." Both songs play to their strengths while also revealing character details that become important as the story develops.

The two stars' best number together, "Shall We Dance," succeeds as much on their abilities as actors as it does on their voices or on Hutchison's feel for staging and choreography.

Bumatai's body language and vocal delivery show us that the king wants Anna to dance with him as she did with her English ex-boyfriend earlier that evening. Shelton's body language and vocal delivery suggest with equal effectiveness Anna's hesitance to comply.

Good theater shows rather than tells, and the scene becomes better than "good" as Bumatai and Shelton play out the characters' shared sense of amazement and wary acceptance of the new intimacy developing between them. The expansive waltz around the library following their first tentative steps together becomes an expansive and joyous release.

Sherry Chock Wong brings a strong, clear voice and fragile beauty to the role of Tuptim, and her rendition of "My Lord and Master" is breathtaking in its delicacy and poignancy. Chock's final scene displays her dramatic talent.

Chock's portrayal is nicely balanced by Cheryl Toma Sanders as Lady Thiang. Everyone with a heart will find themselves getting misty -- if not actually in tears -- by the time Sanders finishes singing "Something Wonderful."

Elitei Tatafu Jr. (Lun Tha) is well cast as Tuptim's Burmese lover. He and Chock make their two duets emotional highlights as well.

John Tolentino is appropriately cold and distant as the powerful Kralahome, and Avamua de Wattville de Berkheim exudes a subtle aura of menace and racial arrogance as the visiting English diplomat who is one of Anna's ex-beaus.

Elsewhere in the production, Hutchison does an effective job staging and choreographing the challenging "Small House of Uncle Thomas," Tom Giza (set design) provides a solid-looking royal library and a beautiful palace garden, and John Parkinson (lighting) adds to the dramatic impact of a romantic rendezvous.





November 21, 2004

Shelton takes
star stage turn

By John Berger



Ray Bumatai and Tina Shelton When it comes to acting talent, Honolulu's television newscasters have plenty of it. There's Joe Moore, who has distinguished himself in recent years as an actor, playwright and producer of shows benefiting various arts groups. There's Jodi Leong, Keoki Kerr and Kirk Matthews, and there's Tina Shelton, who's starring opposite Ray Bumatai in Army Community Theatre's latest revival of "The King & I."

It's Shelton's second ACT show of the year -- not that she expected to be doing two shows this close together.

"It's all about the singing. I can't help but be happy when I'm singing, but it isn't about me wanting to be an entertainer," Shelton said recently, in explaining why she chooses to make the extensive time commitment associated with community theater. She had been planning to try out for another show next year, but didn't want to pass up a role in "The King & I" and wait another five or six years until ACT or Diamond Head Theatre decide to stage it again.

And so Shelton is starring in the great role of Anna Leonowens, the English governess who went to Thailand in 1862 at the invitation of Thai monarch Rama IV Phra Chom Klao "Mongkut," made famous by Yul Brynner, the charismatic actor who defined the role on Broadway in 1951 and in the 1956 film.

Ray Bumatai shares billing as the king. ACT director/choreographer Jim Hutchison also cast Elitei Tatafu Jr. and Sherry Chock Wong as ill-fated lovers Lun Tha and Tuptim, with John Tolentino as the Kralahome and Cheryl Toma Sanders as Lady Thiang.

The story is set during an important period in Thai history. The Thais were attempting to defend their nation from the English, who were approaching through neighboring Burma and Malaya, and also from the French, who were subjugating Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia with equal ruthlessness. The king wanted Thailand to be recognized as a modern "civilized" country, rather than a potential colony to be conquered and exploited, so he invited the English to send a governess to teach his numerous wives and children.

SHELTON, WHO WAS pre-cast as Guinevere in ACT's spring production of "Camelot," loves "The King & I" so much that she got the lead role the old-fashioned way this time -- she auditioned for it.

"I was a little nervous (about auditioning), but when I got to the auditions and saw all these kids -- 4-, 5- and 6-year-olds (auditioning to play the king's children) -- get up there and say their names and that they were going to sing 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,' and then go forward, I thought, so much for (me) being nervous!"

Shelton auditioned for her first show, "My Fair Lady," also at ACT, "on a lark because I'd always loved to sing."

Starring as Liza Doolittle opposite Gary L. Anderson (Henry Higgins), S. Kalani Brady (Freddy Eynsford-Hill) and David Kleist (Alfred P. Doolittle), she remembers it was an "exhausting" experience. She waited several years before returning to ACT for "A Grand Night For Singing," a musical revue that didn't require dancing or characterization.

This year, she's found the whole process "invigorating."

"During 'Camelot' I found that I was getting more energy (as we rehearsed). It's like that vicious cycle of feeling that you're too tired to work out, but if you don't work out, you're gonna stay tired."

Another enjoyable part of the experience is "learning something brand new."

"(Television news) is so intense and so clock-driven all day long that if you take 30 seconds to do something (that's not work-related), you could miss your deadline. That's all you can focus on all day long. When I get to the theater, it requires focus but it's such a different focus. It's like going back to school, and that's very challenging.

"Community theater is by definition theater by people who have real jobs, so the rehearsal time is about the only time that you can give to learning all this new material."

Despite her stage successes to date, Shelton says she never dreamed about being an entertainer. She enjoyed singing in church and hitting "a note or two on the piano" but didn't study acting or music in school.

She considered becoming an attorney until Watergate happened and decided she no longer wanted to be involved in law or politics. She turned out to be a successful television newscaster who nevertheless has time to indulge her favorite hobby.

"When I did 'My Fair Lady' 10 years ago, it was the first time I had ever been on the stage, and it was an outlet for singing. This will be my fourth show total, and what a marvelous experience it is to be playing a woman who teaches English, and to be around the 30 gorgeous children who are in this play."