by jon bosworth (and children) jaxvillain@yahoo.com
My daughters have been looking forward to seeing The Lion King: The Broadway Musical for weeks. At ten and seven, they’ve both seen The Lion King movie, as well as the made-for-straight-to-DVD sequels, so they are well versed on the storyline, which does help with a presentation such as this. The narrative on a single stage is harder to convey, obviously, than the limitless opportunities in an animated adventure, but the musical executed it exquisitely. Ask anyone that sees it and they will fill your ears with awe-inspired ramblings about the music, the costumes, the staging, etc.. There wasn’t one aspect of this musical that wasn’t outstanding.
This is Disney, and they want to wow you from the start, and then continue to surprise you throughout. So during the opening scene, a parade of animals comes down the aisles from behind the audience, and the grandeur of the costumed creatures was unparalleled.
“The rhinocerus and elephant costumes were awesome. They had two people standing inside of them and they were connected by the costume. It was cool,” said my seven year-old.
“I didn’t expect the animals to come up the aisles,” said my ten year-old.
So we’ll start with favorite parts:
“My favorite part was when Scar died, because he was so evil,” said my seven year-old, who was much more enthralled with some of the darker nuances of the stage performance.
Although the film had this same darkness, somehow it was more apparent on the stage. Scar was evil, and he played it well.
“When the buzzards come out, something evil was always about to happen,” she said.
The costumes were something to marvel at, from the half-puppet, half-costumes of the Hyenas and Timon, to the almost too self-aware Zazu, a toucan operated by a blue man in a derby. The man in the derby, Mark Cameron Pow, but he spent most of his time acting through the bird, which he executed deftly, and sometimes represented the bird without the puppet even being present, as though he were some sort of avatar for the creature.
“I thought Zazu was funny. I liked when he said that the stage curtain looked like a shower curtain from Target,” said my seven year-old, “I thought the costumes were really crazy and cool.”
To which my ten year-old added: “They were quite unusual. They weren’t really like clothes. Sometimes they were big, sometimes they were small, sometimes they had long claws, like Rafiki.”
My ten year-old’s favorite part was the ‘Hakuna Matata’ number with Young Simba, Timon and Pumba, although she felt Rafiki was the funniest and had the best voice in the production.
The costumes were groundbreaking and even changed the dynamic of the acting. As you go through and meet each character, they each have something specific about their costume that is made right through the character’s personality or role.
“I liked all of the costumes, they were interesting. They looked mechanical, the actors had to do something to make the costumes work. For example, Scar had to move his head to use the mask piece when acting,” my ten year-old noticed, and she’s exactly right. Scar’s costume included an African mask of a lion head suspended over the actor’s head on a swivel-hinge, so when Scar wanted to get mean, he would lower his real head and position the mask to act as his lion face. Although I’m sure it was a difficult dichotomy for the actors to get used to, it really made the characters step away from the actors playing them as only an animated film could otherwise.
The characters were, for the most part, also very strong and well-played. Scar was fantastic, and Jeremy Irons isn’t easy to live up to, but Dan Donohue did an outstanding job as the evil, power-hungry brother of Mufasa. L. Steven Taylor played a strong Mufasa who was even more believable as a noble king and loving father than James Earl Jones in the film version. And Young Simba, ten year-old Trevor Jackson, was phenomenal as the spry and energetic young king.
“I liked Nala a lot, because she was brave, exciting, and her voice was really pretty. I also liked the Young Simba’s voice, he sounded just like in the movie,” was my ten year-old’s comment.
Although S.J. Hannah looked the part of older Simba (and, again, costuming was impeccable) he couldn’t pull off the strength that Simba is supposed to have achieved in the end of the second act, when he returns home and resembles the dead Mufasa. This Simba just didn’t have the roar, not to mention that his voice was gentle and often lost in the ensemble singing pieces that were supposed to showcase him.
The sets of The Lion King were also amazing.
“I thought it was really cool the way they made the water dry up and go away on stage,” my ten year-old was especially aware of some of the sets. “I liked the stairs they had. Pride Rock would come up and move around while the actors were climbing it. The most exciting part was when Scar fell off after fighting with Simba.”
And the sets were utilized masterfully, including suspension lines that enabled the characters to fall, fly, and perform other remarkable acts that lent it a cartoon feeling of unreality, making it more like a fable.
“I thought it was really cool how they made it like they could really fall, with the rope or whatever they used,” said my seven year-old.
Finally, I would be remiss to not mention the amazing music in this piece. The South African music of the stage play was performed live in an orchestra box by the foot of the stage, and the drums were played from wing stages on either side.
“The drums were really interesting. They were wooden hand drums and they looked really cool,” said my seven year-old.
“The instruments weren’t like rock and roll bands, they were like real African instruments and African music,” added my ten year-old.
And, as Disney is so good at, they even managed to pick a little fun at themselves and give adults jokes that they could laugh at, even if the kids didn’t get it. But the kids managed to get more of the jokes than I thought they would.
“Zazu sang ‘It’s a Small World’ and Scar told him to sing anything but that.”
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