South Pacific leads set to reprise their onstage chemistry in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic.

Lisa McCune and Teddy Tahu Rhodes will be getting to know each other even better next year having been announced as the co-stars for Opera Australia’s revival of Christopher Renshaw’s Tony Award-winning production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I. McCune will play English governess Anna Leonowens with Tahu Rhodes taking on his second musical theatre role as the peppery King of Siam.

The much-admired pair who proved a hit in South Pacific, where they generated column-inches both off and on stage, will headline the Brisbane and Sydney seasons although Teddy Tahu Rhodes will move on before the show reaches Melbourne. The musical, which explores the relationship between a Victorian English governess and the despotic King of Siam, couldn’t be further removed from their roles in the south sea wartime epic and will see McCune singing such hits as Hello Young Lovers and I Whistle a Happy Tune. Meanwhile Tahu Rhodes’ terpsichorean powers will be tested in Shall We Dance.

“Teddy and Lisa coming together worked wonderfully well in South Pacific and it seemed to us that we should capitalise on that success and continue...