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Some discoveries refuse to stay quiet. For Paul Ewing, this one began over lunch in Bangkok. Danny Whitehead, then head of the British Council in Thailand, placed a stack of hardback books on the table – bought, of all places, on eBay. Inside were plays written in English by His Majesty King Rama VI – and, astonishingly, almost entirely unstaged.
'I just had a eureka moment,' Paul says. 'I'm like, I've got to produce these.'
What followed was six months of digging, reading and tracking down English-language plays by His Majesty that he could find. By the end of it, Paul – a Scottish theatre producer, former BBC presenter, Royal Shakespeare Company alumnus and honorary doctorate holder – was convinced. 'I just became absolutely certain that this was the project I was made to do.'
The production that has emerged from that conviction is The King's Command, a one-act farce written by His Majesty King Rama VI in 1901 when the future king was around 20 and had been living in England for the best part of a decade. Educated at Sandhurst and Christ Church College, Oxford, His Majesty had fallen hard for the theatre, writing plays, staging them for friends and members of his royal retinue, and later bringing that passion back to Siam.
The King's Command was performed once, informally, in England. Then, for all practical purposes, it disappeared. There has been no professional production since. Until now.
'When I first read it, I was struck by how quaint and sweet and innocent it was,' Paul says. 'It seemed to be a really innocent look at the purity of love.'
The story is an 18th-century Paris farce set during the reign of Louis XV. A young duke attends a masked ball, falls instantly for a woman he cannot identify, and is promptly ordered by the king to marry someone else entirely. He runs. A young woman shelters him. Complications follow, though Paul is careful not to spoil the ending beyond saying that everything resolves 'wonderfully!'
He reaches, unprompted, for a comparison with James Blunt's You're Beautiful. 'When I saw you on the subway and I'll never see you again but you're beautiful. That's the story, basically.' It is, he says, proof that some things don't change.
'How many times have people been on the MRT or the BTS and caught someone's eye and you're like, oh my gosh, and you never see them again?’ he says. ‘That's what happens in the story. It's timeless...'
The play runs for 40 minutes, and Paul is unapologetic about its brevity. 'It requires the same amount of energy that it would take to put on a play that's an hour and a half long – the same diligence, the same research, the same amount of connection.' He also sees the format as a smart fit for contemporary audiences. The longer-term plan is to stage double bills, pairing two of His Majesty's plays in a single evening, with a set change at the interval.
- The inaugural performance, in royal company, takes place on July 17 – marking the first professional staging of The King's Command in more than a century.
- A public performance follows on July 18 at the Sri Ayudhaya Auditorium in the Rama 6 Foundation at the National Library. Seats are available on a first come, first served basis. Reserve yours here.
Full details will be announced closer to the event via Catalyst Entertainments' Facebook page, with further dates and venues to be revealed.
'Everything has kind of come and aligned at the same time,' Paul says. 'It's rather fortuitous, really.'
Paul has drawn on his UK theatre networks. The production is directed by Reuben Grove, an associate director whose credits span the National Theatre, the Old Vic and Shakespeare's Globe. Movement direction comes from Siân Williams, co-founder of The Kosh physical theatre company and a veteran of RSC productions, Wolf Hall and Kate Bush's residency at the Hammersmith Apollo. Composition and voice direction is by James Oxley, a tenor trained at the Royal College of Music and Oxford. The cast is bilingual, with plans to perform the play in both English and Thai.
'I wanted to bring really good theatre practitioners to bear,' Paul says, 'because His Majesty's plays are in English. He deserves nothing less than the world's best.'
The project sits under The Silk Curtain, the umbrella series for all 20 of His Majesty's unstaged English works, and is being developed in close partnership with the King Vajiravudh Foundation. A larger open-air production is already scheduled for Benchakitti Park in early 2027.
'It doesn't feel like it belongs to me,' Paul says. 'It feels like I'm just helping to facilitate this project. And I'm very proud to be a part of that.'
Whether Bangkok's theatre infrastructure can keep pace is another question. Paul is candid about the challenges: limited venues, limited funding a cultural landscape in which spoken-word drama has never had the same foothold as musical theatre or traditional performance forms. 'There's not a culture of a Broadway or a West End,' he says. 'There aren’t 15 theatres within a five square mile area.'
The appetite, he believes, reflects something deeper: a sense of national pride that spans generations, including younger Thais who may be less familiar with His Majesty's work.
'It's keeping a legacy alive,’ he says. ‘This is an incredible opportunity for Thailand. Not just because His Majesty was Thai, but because one person had such a broad vision of the world. Such a remarkable worldview. That's thrilling. That's a real badge of creative honour for Thailand.'
Further details and updates via Catalyst Entertainments. A public performance follows on July 18 at the Sri Ayudhaya Auditorium in the Rama 6 Foundation at the National Library – reserve your seat here.