In 1994, the Disney Renaissance, launched by the landmark release of The Little Mermaid in 1989, was in full swing. Riding high on a wave of critically acclaimed and financially successful movies including Aladdin and the Oscar-nominated Best Picture Beauty & the Beast, new Disney was creating modern classics with old Disney success. But behind the scenes, with great power came great powerplays (to paraphrase another Disney acquisition megahit), and then chairman of the Walt Disney Company Jeffrey Katzenberg championed an idea for Disney’s first totally original animated movie about the journey of a young lion cub. Despite dozens of treatments by even more writers and creatives, coupled with the fact that the big Disney animators of the generation were more interested in working on Pocahontas rather than “another talking animal movie”, sure that was going to be the bigger hit, Katazenberg’s pet project floundered in limbo. But with the coup of acquiring Grammy winning superstar Elton John (who would add Academy Award Winning and Tony Award Winning to his resume thanks to this collaboration) and Tony and Grammy winning lyricist Tim Rice (Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Chess) to compose the score, Katzenberg’s faith and gamble paid off and The Lion King went on to become the top rated animated movie ever, and the 3rd highest grossing animated film in history adjusted for inflation (topped only by One Hundred and One Dalmations and grandmother of them all Snow White & the Seven Dwarves), selling over 89 million tickets for a worldwide box office of $815.5 million.
The same year, Disney toyed with the idea of adding a theatrical branch to their conglomerate. Their theme park shows were the best in the business, and the idea to adapt megahit Beauty & the Beast into a legitimate Broadway musical took their product to the next level. Disney Theatricals had their first smash hit. To follow up their Tony nominated success (they actually should have won, save for the Tony committee’s anti-Disney bias—“Broadway is no place for theme park entertainment”—losing to the Sondheim mega-flop Passion) the no-brainer answer was to ride the success of their juggernaut film as their sophomore effort. Selecting the multi-talented Julie Taymor (Across the Universe, Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark) as director elevated The Lion King from entertainment to undisputed artistic revelation. Taymor, a multi-faceted director with experience and awards in film, stage, opera, puppetry, mask work, Shakespeare, and a strong background in Asian and African performance art, Taymor was an inspired choice to take the physical production away from the feared theme park look of furry costumes and animal heads. Her work on the show went beyond direction and included costume design, mask design (with Michael Curry), and additional lyrics, as well as changing the character of Rafiki to a female to help make up for a lack of female roles. She was deservedly rewarded with 1998’s Best Musical, Best Director (the first woman and still only one of four to ever win), and Best Costume design Tony Awards, as well as reviews that lauded her creation “the most memorable, moving, and original theatrical extravaganza in years” (The New York Times). Even Ben Brantly, the Times critic who famously hated musicals for the better part of a generation, gave it a begrudgingly rave review, most focused on Taymor’s strengths.
Photo courtesy of Joan Marcus
Fortunately for the current national tour landing the month of July at the Kennedy Center, Taymor and her Tony winning teammates Choreographer Garth Fagan, Set Designer Richard Hudson, and Light Designer Donald Holder are still on board guiding and delivering a tight, moving, and remarkably visceral production that shows no signs of its age. If one of the lessons of The Lion King is that the spirit of our ancestors lives on in us, it is also obvious that the spirit of Taymor lives on in this magnificent, elaborate, and incredibly artistic masterpiece yet today. Based on what is currently on stage in the Hippodrome, it is little wonder that The Lion King has secured its position as the most financially successful musical in history with a worldwide gross of over $8.2 billion and counting. From the familiar stirring notes of the opening strains of “The Circle of Life”, one of the most elaborate and moving opening numbers to ever grace a stage, the show is still full of all the pageantry, reverence, humor, and beauty that held both Disney and Broadway fans captive in 1998. It still produces chill and massive applause when Taymor’s near life-size animal puppets parade through the house to congregate on stage and pay homage to the birth of Simba. The four-person elephant that passed by me with her baby following melted even a jaded critic’s heart.
Not by any means a star-driven show (the clear star is Taymor and those who flesh out her master vision), it could be thought the cast is interchangeable without losing any of the majesty and wonder of the production. Yet it should be noted that nearly half of the leads and ensemble members are veterans of one or more of the New York and international companies or previous national tours returning to carry on the story with power and love. This legacy preserves itself in a show that displays such loyalty and personal investment from the director to the leads all the way down to the stand-by performers.
Photo courtesy of Matthew Murphy
Standouts are Darnell Abraham as Mufasa and Peter Hargrave as his raggedy, nefarious brother Scar. Abraham has the stature and presence of a true King with a booming voice that is not too far off from screen predecessor James Earl Jones. He delivers the first solo not featured in John’s original film score, “They Live in You” (music and lyrics by Mark Mancina, Jay Rifkin, and Lebo M), with regal power and presence. Hargrave is deliciously smarmy as the mangy outcast who has a score to settle with his brother the King, borrowing just the right degree of Jeremy Irons’ villainous envy and entitlement. He lords over a cackle of menacing hyenas, who eventually goose-step to his new world order in a thrilling live version of “Be Prepared”, which is every bit as frightening as it is in the film.
Photo courtesy of Matthew Murphy
South African actress Mukelisiwe Goba, who has performed in no less than four incarnations of this show, embodies the shaman Rafiki as she takes us through the tale as protector of Simba and de facto narrator. From the cold opening of the show when she wails Lebo M’s iconic Zulu chants to open “The Circle of Life”, she instills a geographical accuracy and cultural legitimacy to the story as it unfolds before us through Taymor’s watchful eyes.
Our central protagonist for the cautionary tale (be careful what results when you lead a 10-minute production number titled “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King”), like in the film is split between two versions of the character through time. Initially a spoiled, entitled crown prince with grand ambitions and little self-control (at this performance played by Bryce Christian Thompson), a gregarious and energetic dynamo whose stage presence amazingly belies his young age and experience. He virtually steals every scene he’s in and leads the above number like a pro, with the help of Taymor’s amazing surreal puppets (including a huge rideable ostrich), as we watch him mature during the first act finale, “Hakuna Matata” into a bigger, stronger version of Little Simba, but one whose history of abuse at the hands of his Uncle Scar has left him with serious self-doubt and self-loathing issues. In the physique of Erick D. Patrick, we watch him grow and come to peace with his destiny during the second act, coming to grips with his unsustainable loss in a powerful “Endless Night”, the best and most moving of the new songs (composed by Lebo M, Hans Zimmer, and Jay Rifkin to Taymor’s lyrcs) added for the stage show.
As Simba’s cohort in the story, playmate Nala (Jaxyn Damasco, a young actress with a strong voice and physicality who also effortlessly executes John’s duet harmonies also astride a giant ostrich puppet) paves the way with character and body language for her second act older counterpart and eventual queen (Thembelihle Cele).
As the long-awaited comic relief finally enter stage at the end of the first act when young Simba is driven in shame from the Pridelands, Nick Cordileone and Danny Grumich as affable new sidekicks Timon and Pumbaa add great levity in their roles as protectorates of the vulnerable young lion cub lost in their vegetarian paradise while also providing all the belly laughs Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella milked out of the screenplay. Their tight vaudevillian comedy act is a humorous contrast to the more serious issues and reverent undercurrent throughout the rest of the show.
At this performance, Thom Christopher Warren earns a mention in the underappreciated role of Zazu, Mufasa’s hornbill majordomo who made a secondary character pop with his mastery of Tamor’s intricately articulated and feathered puppet counterpart. And a trio of Scar’s sidekick hyena lackeys (at this performance, Brinie Wallace as a menacing Shenzi, Forest VanDyke as a sinister Banzai, and Sam Linda as the goofy Ed) provide alternating comic relief and utter chills as they emerge from the shadows of the elephant burial ground to center stage as they turn the tables on their untrustworthy leader.
Roger Allers and Irene Mecchi up the ante on their book for the stage show, enhanced from the screenplay (by Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts, and Linda Woolverton), and incorporating more of the darkness and artistry found in the Shakespearean roots of the story suggested by then CEO Michael Eisner (he saw it as King Lear, it evolved closer to Hamlet). While captivating throughout, where most Disney stage shows lag and meander when expanding from the perfect 80 minute source movies into the average 2 and a half hour stage show, Allers and Mecchi do better than usual in their treatment. Even when I feared the story (and the abundance of cultural attention paid to African dance and puppetry) might be getting long and off base for it’s focus audience, I have now seen three generations of young theatregoers disprove that fear, even at a later evening show on a school night, with children delighting till the finale where the Circle of Life becomes complete.
Photo courtesy of Joan Marcus
The technical aspects of the production hardly need praise, but absolutely deserve it. They swept the Tonys and received every accolade across the awards board, and they are still thrilling. Hudson’s sets are stunning, Taymor’s innovative costumes, puppets, and masks visionary, Holder’s lights mesmerizing, and Fagan’s choreography hypnotic. But the true magic is when Taymor brilliantly overlaps them and weaves one into the other. Her costumes become set pieces. The set pieces become choreography. The lights become shadow puppetry. The culmination is a breathtaking artistic revelation unlike virtually anything that has ever been seen on the Broadway stage. Over the years, I had begun to entertain the popular harping in theatrical circles that Ragtime got robbed of the best musical Tony in 1998. This production 25 years later solidified that, as a standout exception, Tony put aside their anti-Disney bias, went against their elitist grain, and got it right.
If there is a mild flaw in the production, the sound is at times slightly muffled and out of balance. But considering this multi-level show has a full pit orchestra, two in-house African percussion sets, additional lyrics in African dialects, what sounds like up to 8 part harmonies at times, and high-pitched comic character voices, in addition to all the other trappings of good sound to contend with balancing and the efforts are still superior than most other touring productions.
As a lifelong Disney fan who has sadly watched the quality of their product deteriorate in the new millennium on all fronts—the movies, the TV channel, the merchandise, and the theme parks, all a shadow of what they were in the 90s—thankfully this stunning stage production, mostly due to Julie Taymor’s dedicated and timeless vision and execution by a well trained corps of loyal actors preserving her legacy, is the rare Disney property that has actually improved with time. The Lion King proudly sings its own chorus of “Hakuna Matata”—no worries that it’s going away anytime soon. Beat the stampede to the Hippodrome for tickets while you can for a grand reminder of what Disney was in its prime, and hopefully may be again.
Running Time: Approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes with one intermission
The Lion King runs through March 2, 2024, at the Hippodrome Theatre in the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center at 12 N. Eutaw Street. For tickets call the box office at 410.752.7444. or purchase them online.