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Giraffes strut on
stilts, birds swoop like kites, antelopes
leap and an elephant sashays
down the aisle and lumbers onstage as
Rafiki, the baboon shaman, breaks
into "Circle of Life," Elton John and Tim
Rice's great song about the
interrelationship of all things.
The music soars as the entire Serengeti
plain of southern Africa comes
to musical life while Pride Rock slowly
rises out of the stage, lions
striding up its perimeter until finally,
King Mufasa and his wife
emerge on top holding aloft their baby,
Simba, heir to the throne, for
all his subjects to see.
This wonderful theater powerfully opens
the stage version of Disney's
"The Lion King," setting up the character
of the whole show with its
soaring melodies, pulsing rhythms,
humanized animals and daring
stylizations.
Julie Taymor's stage adaptation of
Disney's most popular animated
movie, getting its pre-Broadway production
at the Historic Orpheum
Theatre in Minneapolis, is an audacious,
cross-cultural re-envisioning
of the film. It never tries to copy the
film, the way the stage version
of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" did
before it. Yet, somehow it
manages to be true to the film's spirit
while becoming a playful,
imaginative celebration of theater.
Technical
wizardry fits a
simple fable
It's technically complex and
sophisticated, yet the end result is
earthy and simple, like the fable "The
Lion King" is. The design by
Richard Hudson is organic and minimal -
heavy on African fabric designs
and simple clouds, grasses and abstract
shapes - but it conjures up the
vast African savannah while the sumptuous
lighting by Donald Holder
brings dimension as well as atmosphere to
the scene.
The story follows a boy-lion whose
youthful curiosity takes him through
a dizzying journey that leads him to find
how to assume the
responsibilities of being a king. The
presentation of the tale draws
far and wide from world theater, ancient
and modern, from
rod-and-shadow puppets to the latest
technology.
Pride Rock corkscrews up from nowhere.
Characters fly and tumble
through space. A somber, spooky elephant
graveyard emerges from a smoky
haze. A stunning wildebeest stampede
rockets madly from hilltop down
into valley with fanciful force. Yet all
the while, you can see that
the animals are people portraying animals.
Animal-people
kingdom
The lions are actors wearing lion
headdresses, some of which rear back
on their heads or shoot toward an
adversary. Zazu, the king's
majordomo, is a bird-puppet operated in
the Japanese Bunraku style. The
baboon Rafiki appears wrapped in splendid
African fabrics, her face
painted in swirls of color like a Kabuki
actor. Somehow it all fits
into the African, world-as-a-community
context that envelops "The Lion
King."
Taymor clearly knows that the movie was
seen by millions, all of whom
will have some expectations of her show.
Thus, two of the film's most
popular figures, the warthog Pumbaa (Tom
Alan Robbins) and the meerkat
Timon (Max Casella) look almost exactly
like the film figures. Of
course, Robbins wears the warthog around
his waist, hooked on by
suspenders while Casella, dressed in
camouflage green, propels the
human-sized Timon in front of him.
Taymor gets more fanciful with unnamed
characters. Birds are propelled
by actors who wing them around on wires
and strings. Gazelles are
fastened to a sort of tricycle that makes
them leap continuously as the
contraption wheels about. Even the
grasslands are personified by
dancers' grass headdresses, over which
tiny puppets of Simba and Nala
bound in one of the show's many magic
moments.
An
African heartbeat
Although the majority of songs are by John
and Rice (who have added
three strong numbers to the movie's
original five), the feel of the
show is really captured by the rhythmic
South African underscoring and
newly written chants and songs by Lebo M,
Mark Mancina, Hans Zimmer and
Jay Rifkin. The uplifting "He Lives in
You," the powerful "Shadowlands"
and the rousing spiritual "One By One" are
especially superb.
Taymor and her crew have done a splendid
job of keeping this show
rolling, and the strong cast doesn't have
a weak link.
The deep-voiced, dignified Samuel E.
Wright as Mufasa is both bold and
tender. He provides perfect contrast to
John Vickery's insinuating
Scar, who sounds a great deal like Jeremy
Irons did in the movie, but
with his own languid, oily cynicism.
As the young Simba, 12-year-old Scott
Irby-Ranniar proves to be a
natural performer with bumptious energy
and great stage intuition who
makes all the right choices: energetic,
curious and adventurous.
As hard as his performance is to follow,
Jason Raize as the older Simba
manages, keeping the outgoing charm while
developing a mature
responsibility.
Le Loka brings a splendidly expressive,
gutsy voice to Rafiki, giving
her not only all the humor of baboonery,
but an odd and effective
majesty, as well. Geoff Hoyle motors Zazu
around like a vaudeville
ventriloquist, tossing off groaning puns
with an easygoing lack of
shame. Heather Headley is a honey-voiced
Nala. Casella and Robbins
treat Timon and Pumbaa like a couple of
Borscht Belt comics, making
their goofy paean to avoidance, "Hakuna
Matata," a highlight of an
evening with many highlights, an evening
of almost pure delight.
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