Angela Baumgardner & Pedro Ka’awaloa Will Lead the Tour of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The King and I

Newcomers Angela Baumgardner and Pedro Ka'awaloa will star in the national tour of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The King and I as Anna Leonowens and the King of Siam, respectively. Based on the 2015 Tony-winning Lincoln Center Theater production, The King and I tour will begin November 9 at the Wilson Center in Wilmington, NC, before traveling to cities across the country.

In the words of Bartlett Sher, director of the 2015 Broadway production and the first national tour, “Great classics come back to us when we need them the most. In order to live up to the scale of its ambition, we have to go both backward and forward in time. It’s like having one foot in the past as deeply as we can, one foot in the present, and our eyes looking out as far ahead as we can to see how it resonates.”

In addition to Baumgardner and Ka'awaloa, the touring cast of The King and I will feature DeAnna Choi as Lady Thiang, Bern Tan as Kralahome, Paulina Yeung as Tuptim, Dongwoo Kang as Lun Tha, Timothy Matthew Flores as Prince Chulalongkorn, Hayden Bercy as Louis Leonowens and Stanton Morales as Captain Orton/Sir Edward Ramsey.

The ensemble includes Catrina Teruel Clark, Raymond Dimaano, Atsushi Eda, Cj Fernando, Jenna Ho, Masumi Iwai, Anjali Kanter, Akina Kitazawa, Keiji Kubo, Kylie Kuioka, Catherine Landeta, Jee Heng Liao, Linder Sutton, Tsubasa Ogawa, Soraya Patoonsittichai, Trevor Roderick, Richel Mari Ruiz, Pepita Salim, Annie Sherman, Kayla Rachel Teruel, Matheus Ting, Hiroko Uchino, Dax Valdes and Eliot Waldvogel.

Tour director Shelley Butler says, “Now feels like the perfect time to bring forward this powerful story with its depiction of clashing cultures and its journey toward understanding. It is a great pleasure to helm the tour with a dynamic cast of 33 actors, including an array of international company members. It is an honor and a privilege to continue the vision of Bartlett Sher and the brilliant Lincoln Center Theater creative team.”

One of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s finest works, The King and I boasts a score that features such beloved classics as “Getting To Know You,” “I Whistle a Happy Tune,” “Hello Young Lovers,” “Shall We Dance” and “Something Wonderful.” Set in 1860’s Bangkok, the musical tells the story of the unconventional and tempestuous relationship that develops between the King of Siam and Anna Leonowens, a British schoolteacher whom the modernist King, in an imperialistic world, brings to Siam to teach his many wives and children.

To find out when Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The King and I is headed to your city, click here.