-Brenda Hillegas
photo by Matthew Murphy
As soon as the curtain goes up and you get a glimpse of baby Simba being held high above Pride Rock for the first time, you’ll know immediately why Disney’s The Lion King is the world’s number one musical. This show is pure theatre magic. It’s not just children who will be in awe of the 200 elaborate puppets- including a 13 feet long, 12 feet high elephant and a pair of 14 feet high giraffes- you’ll gasp at the beauty of it all too.
Tony award-winning director and designer Julie Taymor, along with designer Michael Curry, hand sculpted and painted the prototype for the masks that appears in the iconic “Circle of Life” opening number. And the show only gets better from there. A department of mask makers,
sculptors, and puppeteers spent over 17,000 hours to build the anthropomorphic
animal characters for the production when it debuted on Broadway in 1997. The musical is still on Broadway today.
Every cast member steals the show, from the charming young Simba (Mason Lawson) and young Nala (Aniya Simone) to their adult counterparts (Darian Sanders and Khalifa White) to the hilarious Timon and Pumbaa (the puppetry by Nick Cordileone and John E. Brady is a joy to watch) and all of the other characters we know and love from the movie. Peter Hargrave is perfect as Scar! Seeing each one as they come on stage is like a big hug from the past- it’s so good to see these characters again!
The songs, of course you know them. With originals written for the stage version, also by Elton John and Tim Rice, The Lion King will be taken to a whole new level. If you’re in need of a dose of early ’90s Disney nostalgia or thinking about one last family activity before school starts, this is it. Cast members come through the aisles, bird puppets fly in the balcony, musicians sit in the orchestra boxes and the Academy of Music is transformed into the Pride Lands of Africa. It’s the must-experience production of the summer and you need to grab your tickets now.
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