I'm not looking for yul brenner!

The part of the king is tricky sometimes for actors who would like to audition because almost everyone has an image of Yul Brenner as the King. Bald. Well King Mongkut may or may not have been bald so relax, you wont HAVE to shave your head! You will have to show us a mature ruler, used to complete obedience but sincerely trying to bring the country he loves into the modern and westernized era. It IS a singing role but more in a character type style. He is in a tough place. On the one hand he wants Siam to take her place in the modern world but he also knows he is potentialy going against hundreds of years of a traditional monarchy. Mongkut was a highly educated man himself having spent some of his youth as a monk. His interaction with Anna is a struggle, sometimes humerous, to understand what is important from HER standpoint. All in all we LIKE him. We sympathize with him and we we want him to be a real feeling, breathing human being. At the time of the action he is any where from 50-70 years old. Meaning stage age of course. He is in his final years of power.