STAGE ROYALTY

posted by James Reel

    One of the Lion King touring companies has come to town, and, surprise, even though it’s a commercial musical, I like it:

Everything you've heard about it for the past nine years is true: The Lion King is a tremendously inventive, visually arresting and often musically compelling stage show that can captivate adults as well as children. And the further it strays from the Disney animated movie, the better it gets. … The stage musical takes the movie only as a starting point; in the music hall, we still have to put up with fart jokes and Elton John, but we are introduced to new elements in every department that take the story's African setting and culture seriously. Experiencing this in the theater is a far richer experience than watching the Disney animation on a DVD.