First of all, I went to see this with my mom, which is a plus. I love including her in things I love to do.
Second, when I first heard about The Lion King, the musical YEARS ago when it opened on Broadway, I was not excited about it. I wasn't excited about the movie when it came out. In fact, the only reason why I saw the movie (for the first time on VHS tape- not even in theaters) was because my brother and sister wanted me to watch it with them because they loved it and kept quoting lines from it during my visit over the summer that the movie was released on tape. So I watched it with them, and loved it! Loved the music, loved the storyline, everything. Then, when I heard about it going on Broadway I was exceptionally limited by my own mind. As much as I like to think I have this wonderful imagination, I could not fathom how they would be able to put singing animals on stage. There was no way that my mind could conceive that and accept that it would be good and worth the money to see it, versus watching the movie.
Boy was I wrong!
This musical was completely magical! From before the overture began to the very last curtain call. A lot of times when you see a musical on tour, there's a sense that you are missing some of, or a lot of, the key elements that went along with having the Broadway stage at your disposal. For one, the Broadway stage is fitted with grooves and apparatuses that are needed to support shows and plays with huge sets that move and transport you from one place to the next. For example, when I went to see Aida on tour, after seeing in on Broadway, there were a lot of staging elements that were missing and the musical felt "small" on the stage at the Landmark Theater, versus the stage at the theater I saw it on in New York. The musical was still good, but it just felt cramped to me. I'm sure that those who hadn't seen it on Broadway didn't feel slighted at all, which is more than likely why I was and am so enamored with the production The Lion King that I saw after not having seen it on Broadway. But there were so many elements that were in this traveling production that I know were present on Broadway that I am pretty darn sure that the only thing missing was a bigger stage. The animals still came down the aisles, the birds still flew from the balconies...I mean, it was a visual paradise! The only thing that was off from the traveling play versus the show on Broadway was that the guy who played Timon was in a green body suit. Now, on Broadway, he blended in with the greenery of the forest that was a part of the set on stage. But in the traveling production, he was in front of a yellow-orange screen & backdrop with long lines of grass on the stage floor. It wasn't a green washout like on Broadway, but that was even OK. There's even the song the Rafiki sings to Simba when she (it was a lady in this production) finds him after feeling that he is still alive that I SWEAR I have heard before. I don't know where, but I knew that song like I had sung it before and I'd never seen the musical & never heard the soundtrack...to my knowledge. The same thing happened when I went to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat when Joseph sang "Close Every Door."
I would CERTAINLY see this production again, in fact, I'm trying to get the funds together to see it in a few months. It was really awesome.
On a sadder note, though, I couldn't help thinking, as I was watching the musical about the little girl who played Nala on Broadway and had passed away about a month before I saw the show on tour. She was such a cute little girl who had a passion for Broadway and had been diagnosed with cancer. It was hard to imagine, as I watched the performer who played Nala that night, that such a young, vibrant personality had been snuffed from the earth by a truly vicious and unrelenting disease. So, I end this post with her picture and a reminder to cherish the life you have and the people you live it with. They can be gone faster than you know.
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