Kevin Gray, a veteran of the most recent Broadway revival of The King and I, will be the King of Siam again at Paper Mill in Millburn, NJ, April 3-May 19. The British schoolteacher he spars with will be Carolee Carmello.
Gray played the title role of The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway and starred as Gaylord Ravenal in the Los Angeles company of Show Boat. He toured as The Engineer in Miss Saigon (winning Toronto's Dora Mavor Moore and L.A. Drama-Logue awards).
Gray and Carmello, the Tony Award-nominated star of Parade and the most recent star of Broadway's hit Kiss Me, Kate, will dance to the steps of Susan Kikuchi, who will recreate Jerome Robbins' choreography from the original 1951 staging of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic. Kikuchi knows her stuff: Her mom, Yuriko Kikuchi, played Eliza in the "Small House of Uncle Thomas" ballet in the show in 1951. Mark Hoebee directs the 51st anniversary revival of The King and I.
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This year marks the 100th anniversary of composer Richard Rodgers' birth, and revivals and concerts are busting out all over. Paper Mill, which used to be known as Paper Mill Playhouse but now prefers Paper Mill: The State Theatre of New Jersey, is one of the country's major musical revival houses. —Robert Simonson
and Kenneth Jones