Portal:Theatre

The King and I is a musical by the team of composer Richard Rodgers and dramatist Oscar Hammerstein II. It is based on the 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon, which derives from the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, governess to the children of King Mongkut of Siam in the early 1860s. The musical relates the experiences of Anna, a British schoolteacher hired as part of the King's drive to modernize his country. Their relationship is marked by conflict through much of the piece, and a love that neither can admit. Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote the musical for veteran star Gertrude Lawrence. Rex Harrison, who played the King in the 1946 movie of Landon's book, was unavailable, so Yul Brynner was chosen. The musical premiered in March 1951 at Broadway's St. James Theatre and ran nearly three years. It was an immediate hit, winning Tony Awards for Best Musical and for Best Actress and Best Featured Actor for Lawrence and Brynner (pictured). A hit London run and U.S. national tour followed, together with a 1956 film for which Brynner won an Academy Award. Professional and amateur revivals of The King and I are staged regularly throughout the English-speaking world.

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• 8 September 1955 – Birth of Osonye Tess Onwueme, an important Nigerian playwright whose works focus on social justice
• 10 September 1892 – Opening of London's Duke of York's Theatre, built for actor-managers Frank Wyatt and Violet Melnotte
• 11 September 1911 – Opening of the Eltinge 42nd Street Theatre (later the Empire Theatre) with a production of Bayard Veiller's Within the Law
• 12 September 1866 – Premiere of The Black Crook, often considered to be the first work of modern musical theatre
• 16 September 1935 – Broadway premier of Ayn Rand's Night of January 16th, a courtroom drama with two alternative endings decided by a jury of audience members at each performance
• 19 September 1936 – Death of Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande, who brought about a renaissance in classical Indian music
• 24 September 1910 – Birth of Cao Yu, often regarded as the most important Chinese playwright of the 20th century
• 27 September 1917 – Opening of the Broadhurst Theatre with a production of George Bernard Shaw's Misalliance

John Barrymore (1882–1942) was an American actor on stage, screen and radio. Born into a theatrical dynasty, he initially tried to avoid the stage, briefly attempting a career as an artist, but he soon followed his father Maurice and siblings Ethel and Lionel into acting. After beginning in light comedy, he moved to high stage drama, culminating in productions of Justice (1916), Richard III (1920), and especially Hamlet (1922), a role critics lavishly praised him for. After his stage career peaked, he turned entirely to cinema for the next 14 years, initially in silent films. His stage-trained voice proved an asset when sound films were introduced, and three of his works have been inducted into the National Film Registry. His personal life has been the subject of much attention before and since his death. He struggled with alcohol abuse from the age of 14, was married and divorced four times, and declared bankruptcy in his fifties. Much of his later work involved self-parody and the portrayal of drunken has-beens. A hugely influential actor whose talent still shapes Shakespearean acting today, his later career and private life were seen by the obituarists as a waste of a once-great talent.

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• ... that Mirza Ebrahim Khan Sahhafbashi opened the first commercial movie theater in Iran, only for it to be banned within a month?
• ... that Denise Stoklos's "essential theatre" involves minimizing her acting methods while maximizing "the power of drama"?
• ... that the father of Lithuanian scientific forestry also directed theatre, organized a school, compiled maps, and wrote a dictionary of plants, a mathematics textbook, and a collection of poetry?
• ... that 133 notable Viennese personalities are in Gustav Klimt's Auditorium of the Old Burgtheater?
• ... that Miroslava Pešíková was a ballerina at the National Theatre in Prague for 28 years in 47 roles?
• ... that the church of St James the Less, Pockthorpe, now the home of the Norwich Puppet Theatre, once contained a rood screen with portraits of saints painted in 1479?

The playwright of today likes to believe that he is throwing light upon his time, when his time is actually throwing light upon him. — James Thurber

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