In a week when we are much concerned with the conduct of kings - future ones, at any rate - it is instructive to see a show in which a debate about the nature of monarchy is placed firmly centre stage.

The King and I, Rodgers and Hammerstein's melody-packed musical of 1951, deals with the Siamese court of the mid-19th-century, which was clearly very different from that of Britain today. The King (Kevin Gray) tells his children's newly appointed teacher Anna Leonowens (Elizabeth Renihan) that his offspring from his many wives numbers "only" (!) 67. "I began very late," he adds.

We are destined to meet only a select group of these winsome youngsters whose antics -- especially those of the Crown Prince (Omar Al Khina) -- add hugely to our enjoyment of this gloriously colourful production. The schoolroom scene, which features what is for me the show's best number, Getting to Know You, is a particular delight.

But this is far from being the only great song. This is not the sort of 'melody lite' musical we grew accustomed to later in the 20th century. Just hear Anna and her young son Louis (Thomas Siman) on I Whistle a Happy Tune, or Something Wonderful from the King's 'senior wife' Lady Thiang (Gina Respall) or We Kiss in a Shadow from the lovely Tuptim (Yanle Zhong) -- sent from Burma as a "present" to the King -- and her lover from home, Lun Tha (Alex Beuselinck), who is in hiding at the palace.

This grand establishment is well presented in Emma Ryott's designs, decked out with sumptuous maroon and gold. More visual splendour comes in the show's ballet, the charming Siamese version of Uncle Tom's Cabin, with features that would have come as a surprise to its creator Harriet Beecher Stowe.

The clash of cultures between the crinoline-clad Anna -- Victorian in most senses of the word -- and the strutting, autocratic and pampered (now that does suggest the House of Windsor) King is powerfully presented in the performances of the two central players. But while Ms Renihan is lucidity itself, it is sometimes hard to follow what Mr Gray is saying, possibly because his accent occasionally veers more towards guttural German than the magical East.

At the end, Western values appear to have triumphed, but too late for the King, who dies in the closing scene. The sight of his corpse lying in state is something else that invites interesting comparisons in this week of a Pontiff's death.

CHRIS GRAY