Shall we dance? (From The Northern Echo)

Shall we dance?

4:45pm Friday 6th January 2012 in Features By Steve Pratt

Steve Pratt sets out for the slightly colder climes of Newcastle to discover how actor Ramon Tikaram is coping with the role of the dancing king of Siam.

FORGET the tango and the paso doble. They should put the polka into Strictly Come Dancing.

That would sort out the men from the boys on the dancefloor, as Ramon Tikaram would tell you after learning the dance for a revival of the musical The King And I.

One of the most memorable scenes has the King of Siam doing the polka with English governess Anna around one of the state rooms of the grand palace. They gallop around and around the room at top speed, him barefoot and her in a voluminous Victorian gown.

Tikaram, who made his name as bisexual plumber Ferdy in This Life and has a recurring role in EastEnders, admits that he was nervous about the dance scene. He did some dancing “in my day” but that was in discotheques. “That was a long time ago and this is a very different type of dance,” he says.

“Initially I was really scared because the polka is quite an active dance and David Needham, the choreographer, has put in a lot of extra moves that you didn’t see in the film and previous productions. But now I get excited about the dance.”

Not that there haven’t been mishaps. Like the time he stepped on Anna’s billowing dress and fell over. “I got up and carried on.

That got the biggest applause,” he says.

“You have to take a secure hold and can’t be in too close or you get caught in the dress.”

This lavish and spectacular new production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical – complete with giant gold Buddhas, sumptuous costumes, shadow puppets, ballet sequences and a chorus of local children – is being staged by Music And Lyrics, a new independent theatre consortium comprising the UK’s most independent touring theatres.

Tikaram plays the King, a role created on stage and film by Yul Brynner, opposite double Olivier Awrad nominated Josefina Gabrielle as the widowed governess who travels to Siam to look after the ruler’s many children.

The famous songs featured include I Whistle A Happy Tune, Hello Young Lovers, The March Of The Siamese Children and Getting To Know You.

Part of the reason Tikaram is doing the show is to get a glimpse of theatres outside London – the production plays at Newcastle Theatre Royal in the North-East – although he goes regularly to his “local” theatre, Salisbury Playhouse.

He wasn’t over-familiar with The King And I as a theatre piece. He had seen a production “many, many years ago” and saw the film starring Brynner and Deborah Kerr, but wasn’t unaware of the scale of the project.

Brynner won both a Tony and an Oscar for his performance which is printed indelibly in the minds of many who’ve seen the film. So Tikaram faces making the role his own. “I’ve tried to factor out of my mind all precedents or received ideas of what it should be like,” he explains.

“I’ve looked at what’s on the page and thought how I would approach it. There are moments – because I’ve recently seen the Yul Brynner film again – where I can see why he made the choices he did as the script is quite descriptive about things.”

What he looked for were ways of making the king more approachable or likeable as the character has fixed opinions, particularly about the status of women, that don’t particularly endear him to modern audiences.

“One of the problems of playing a totalitarian character who seems intractable is you can make them quite boring because of it. You also have to make people understand why Anna chooses to stay around such a person,” says Tikaram.

One way he differs from Brynner is in his hairstyle. Brynner was famously bald, whereas Tikaram wears his hair long, but pulled back. He was prepared to have his head shaved for the part, but the producers said there was really no need. Having a bald head would also have reminded people of Brynner.

“Originally, they put extensions in. my hair, but now it’s grown to that length anyway – and I didn’t like the extensions,” he says.

Tikaram’s previous West End credits include musicals such as Bombay Dreams, Jesus Christ Superstar (as Judas) and the title role in Gaddafi – A Living Myth at English Natural Opera. He wasn’t particularly looking to do another musical when the offer of the six-month tour of The King And I came along.

“The character is quite an interesting one although it wasn’t on my list of things to do.

But it seemed a fairly obvious part to do and better to do younger rather than older.”

He won’t be absent from TV screens while on tour. He’s back in BBC1’s EastEnders this month as Qadim Shad, father of Amira (the girl who married gay Syed), as part of the latest crisis in the Masood household.

He has several other BBC projects waiting to be shown – White Heat, a six-parter interweaving the lives of characters from the Sixties to the present day. He plays one of the characters in the last episode, as a 63- year-old old. He also appears in BBC4’s drama Hotel Taliban, the story of journalist Sean Langan’s kidnapping and being held hostage by the Taliban in 2008.

His looks – he’s of Indo-Fijan and Malaysian descent – can dictate the kind of roles he’s offered. So is he getting the work he wants? “It’s always difficult. I am mixed race and of a certain age and I don’t know.

It’s not that I just take what I am given, but I don’t press for the chances that certain actors do. I’m not complaining about it.”

• The King And I: Newcastle Theatre Royal, Jan 24-28. Box Office: 0844-112121 and theatreroyal.co.uk