|
Walk west on 42nd
Street, just past a Times Square shedding
its sleaze
in a flurry of new construction and
restoration.
There stands the New Amsterdam Theater, a
1903 art nouveau masterpiece
brought back to life earlier this year by
the Walt Disney organization,
reportedly at a cost of $34 million.
To fill its new theater, Disney has chosen
The Lion King, a $15 million
stage adaptation of its wildly successful
- and profitable - animated
film that has a score by Elton John and
Tim Rice. The show opens
Thursday night.
The Lion King is a property that movie
financial analysts say already
has contributed, in all its forms, $1
billion to Disney's bottom line.
One can understand why. Set against the
backdrop of the African veld,
the film version is a stirring, almost
mythic story of love, loss and
redemption played out in a journey that
tests Simba, its young lion
hero.
''When you start thinking about what's
important in a Broadway musical,
it's about telling a very emotional story.
We had all the elements - a
great story and great music - but no way
to put it on the stage,'' said
Peter Schneider, president of Walt Disney
Theatrical Productions.
The way was found through Julie Taymor, a
44-year-old director-designer
who had never done a commercial Broadway
musical. Yet Taymor is known
for her imaginative interpretations of
drama, opera, film and dance,
performed in venues ranging from tiny
off-Broadway houses to arts
festivals in Europe.
Taymor has tackled such diverse and
unusual fare as Titus Andronicus
and Oedipus Rex with astonishing success,
using puppets, masks, giant
sculptures, fanciful costumes, exotic
music, shadow play and more.
''It seemed on the surface an obvious
choice to go to someone who had
often told stories that required an
extraordinary visual style,'' says
Tom Schumacher, executive vice president
of Disney's theatrical
division.
A dark-haired, articulate woman, Taymor
doesn't speak in one-word
answers or single sentences. Only full
paragraphs will do.
''The first stage was coming up with what
were the story points that I
felt needed to be expanded on,'' Taymor
says. ''If you saw the movie,
you'll recognize that the second act of
the musical is rather different
than the film.
''Simba had to be much more developed. The
prodigal son must go through
that darker moment of self-discovery
before he is allowed to return
home and take up the mantle. The movie
didn't go into that very
deeply.''
Secondly, there was the score - which in
the movie was only five songs.
John and Rice added three songs. In
addition, Taymor had the yeoman
assistance of Lebo M, a South African-born
composer and arranger who
had worked on the movie. From ''Rhythm of
the Pride Lands,'' a Lion
King-inspired recording Lebo did with Mark
Mancina, Jay Rifkin and Hans
Zimmer, Taymor picked several melodies to
use in the musical as
individual songs and chants.
The film also contained so much choral
music that Taymor decided to
expand on the sound, using the chorus as a
principal character. It led
to the show's evocative opening number,
''Circle of Life,'' being
staged as a parade by the chorus down the
aisles of the theater and
onto the stage.
The third part of the process was the
visual concept, in which Taymor
took the idea of the Circle of Life as the
musical's main symbolic
element. She came up with the notion of
turntables within turntables
within turntables, like a wedding cake.
When set designer Richard
Hudson was hired, he refined the design to
a kind of corkscrew Pride
Rock.
A meeting Taymor had with Disney head
honcho Michael Eisner in Florida
in January 1996 pushed the project
forward.
There, Taymor and Michael Curry, one of
her designers, presented mask
prototypes for Mufasa, the old lion king,
and Scar, his villainous
brother - they were more like shields than
masks, she says - as well as
a cardboard copy of what she called the
gazelle wheel. When the gazelle
wheel is pushed across the stage by a
dancer, the wheels turn and the
gazelles look like they are leaping.
''To me, magic means you are capable of
seeing the artifice, seeing the
strings, seeing the rods, watching the
people manipulate the puppets,''
Taymor said.
Once Eisner understood the concept, she
said, ''I knew . . . I would
have the freedom and the leeway to pursue
this style - which means I
would always have the double event of
seeing the faces and bodies of
the performers who are operating the
various characters.''
The large cast was carefully chosen. John
Vickery (Scar) and Samuel E.
Wright (Mufasa) are veteran stage actors.
Geoff Hoyle, who plays
Mufasa's flighty feathered confidante
Zazu, is an experienced clown and
circus performer. Others like Tsidii Le
Loka, who plays the evening's
spiritual mistress of ceremonies Rafiki,
came directly from South
Africa. Newcomers Scott Irby-Ranniar and
Jason Raize are the two
Simbas.
|
