December 20, 2002

Disney's stage version of The Lion King opened in New York on November 13, 1997 and immediately became one of the biggest smash-hits the town had ever seen.  About a month later, I called in a favor (a very big favor, obviously) and obtained tickets to see it at the New Amsterdam Theater.  What follows is the review I wrote after that night...and what will follow this flashback is my review of the touring company performance which I caught last night in Los Angeles.  Here's what I wrote back in '97, and please note that the rumors about them adding a second company or doing more than eight performances a week never evolved into anything more than rumors...

Before I turn reviewer here, I should own up to a possible conflict of interest: I am a Disney stockholder.  I own one share.

This means I get all sorts of neat mailings and stockholders' reports.  For those of you who are into science-fiction, I recommend the latter, especially the parts about Michael Eisner's salary.

I also receive quarterly dividend checks, the most recent of which was for 13 cents.  They spent 32 cents in postage to send this to me, plus probably a buck or two in processing costs.  How this company can possibly stay in business, throwing around money like this, is beyond me.

Actually, one of the things the Disney organization does very well is to throw around money.  They tend not to throw much of it towards employees below the executive level, and it sure doesn't make it down to us stockholders.  But they do lob it around and usually to good effect.

Nowhere is this more in evidence than on 42nd Street where the New Amsterdam Theater, shabby and in disrepair for too long, has been reborn.  This is the work of checks, from both the city and the Disney folks, far larger than the ones the latter sends me.  The theater — the whole block, in fact — has received a stunning makeover and is now magnificent.  I dunno what scalpers are getting lately for seats to The Lion King, but it's probably worth it just to walk into the New Amsterdam and stare at the ceiling.

Large amounts of Disney Dollars have also been spent to put The Lion King on the boards, and it already looks like a brilliant investment.  They're hurriedly putting together new companies of the show to play other theaters.  Okay, that's how it usually works.  A show's a hit on Broadway and they assemble a road company to go play Toronto and Chicago and so on.  But what's staggering about the success of The Lion King is that they're reportedly discussing another company to play New York City.

That's right.  They're turning so many folks away down on 42nd Street that someone thinks it would be cost-efficient to procure another theater in or around Times Square and open a second production of The Lion King in town.  And if that cannot be arranged, word along the Great White Way is that they're dickering with the unions about adding some cast and staff, rotating them about and doing more than the customary eight performances a week.

This is almost unprecedented in theatrical history.  Apparently, there was a now-obscure show way back in 1917 that was then so non-obscure and in-demand that its producers opened a second, concurrent production at another theater.  That was the last time doubling-up was even a viable notion.

Disney, of course, has one big advantage if they decide to clone The Lion King: No one is coming to see the actors.  As must delight the corporate hierarchy, the sets and costumes and especially the staging are the stars, so duplicating the show is just a matter of writing checks — something, as noted, Disney does well.

And the sets, costumes are staging are wonderful.  Director Julie Taymor has placed a surreal, colorful impression of the jungle on the stage of the New Amsterdam.  Though not one real animal appears anywhere in the production, the theater is alive with antelope and giraffes and hyenas and birds and even an elephant, all limned in costuming and puppetry.  The impact is, with a few exceptions which I'll get to, artfully stunning and effective.

So I should be writing here that it was a wonderful evening and that it's one of the greatest shows I've ever seen.  The truth is — and I'm just as amazed at this as you may be, especially if you've read the reviews — I didn't like it very much.

I am, I must admit, darn near alone on this.  The audience this evening stood and cheered and generally left as happy as I've ever seen a crowd exit.  Despite the fact that the plotline precisely replicates the movie, which I liked a lot, I found the show uninvolving and even, particularly in the second act, occasionally boring.  My problem — and it may just be my problem — is that I think the staging is so wonderful, so much the show, that it smothers the story.

This was not the case with Beauty and the Beast.  For me, the Broadway incarnation expanded upon and enhanced the scenario, bringing it to life on a whole new level.  But then, that property enjoyed an advantage: It was the tale of a lord and his palace staff transformed into monstrosities, and of their struggle to regain human forms.  This was all done well in animation, but it simply meant more to see them, on stage, transformed back into actual human beings, as opposed to more realistically-drawn cartoon characters.

No such enhancement occurs with Simba and the tale of his ascendancy to the throne.  In the movie, there is a key plot moment: Simba is caught in a stampede and nearly trampled into a smear before he is rescued by his father.  It is a scary and memorable scene, and I don't see how the film could have done a better job of it.  The moment is re-created on stage for the musical and, again, they do a clever job, the ingenuity of which brings applause.

But it isn't scary.  Not in the least.

You're not watching a life-threatening stampede, you're watching a staging trick.  That's what the audience applauds: Look how resourcefully they're symbolizing a stampede on stage.

Well, that's not what you're supposed to be thinking; not if there's a genuine narrative in progress.  You're supposed to be thinking: Geez, Simba's in a lot of trouble.  Therein, to me, lies the problem.  I never stopped watching the staging and started watching the characters.

It's especially unsettling with regard to three animals from the movie — Timon, Pumbaa and Zazu.  (In the animated edition, Timon was the meerkat voiced by Nathan Lane, Pumbaa was the warthog voiced by Ernie Sabella, and Zazu was the uppity hornbill voiced by Rowan "Bean" Atkinson.)  It may have been due to someone's concern for the ongoing merchandising of those characters, or it was just felt that kids would notice their absence or remodelling.  The lion characters — Simba, Mufasa, Scar, etc. — are just played by folks wearing mane headdresses.  But Timon, Pumbaa and Zazu have been faithfully replicated as puppets and, while their handlers do skillful jobs of manipulating them and aping the film voices, the puppeteers are intentionally and jarringly visible.

We're supposed to just ignore them, and we try, but it's like trying to overlook one Siamese twin.  Zazu has a little clownlike man in a derby hat sticking out of him for the entire show and it's impossible to look at the puppet and not at the funny little man.  (By the way, they expanded Pumbaa's part by adding a seemingly-endless array of fart jokes and, yes, they even used that word.  Walt would have been so proud.)

So that all didn't work for this reviewer.  I also found the songs undistinguished, particularly the new ones but also those I'd liked in the movie.  (There are some splendid musical moments involving African dance, but they have little or nothing to do with Simba or his crown or any of this.)  For me, the whole evening was one of those Grinch-like experiences, where you're up on the hillside, looking down at Whoville, wondering why everyone but you is having such a wonderful time.

I didn't...and I am well aware that it won't make one bit of difference to the Walt Disney Company.  The Lion King is one of the biggest hits to ever roar on Broadway and it will probably be running there when the kid playing the Young Simba is old enough to play the Adult Simba.  Though I didn't like the show, there are two reasons I'm pleased for its success...

1. Broadway needs future playgoers.  Some years ago, someone — it may have been me — was suggesting that the theatrical community should subsidize a permanent and ongoing production of Peter Pan in some Times Square house.  No matter how much it lost, they should underwrite it and keep it going, so that youngsters can be taken to it, and introduced to the theater.

This may no longer be necessary, thanks to Disney.  Beauty and the Beast — which I think is a wonderful show — is still running, and The Lion King may at least work well on that level.  Disney plans other such productions and, in light of their success, others will doubtlessly follow.  So Broadway — which in many years past offered nothing to which you could take a 9-year-old — is becoming more the kid-friendly environment.  That's great.  And the other reason I'm delighted to see The Lion King succeed is —

2. Like I said, I own the one share of stock.  This show is making millions and — who knows? — maybe one of these days, my dividends will be half the cost of the stamps to send them to me.

Okay, that's what I wrote back then.  Lemme tell you about last night.  (By the way, my stock has since split and I now own two shares of Disney.  But in spite of this, I shall pull no punches...)

I enjoyed it more this time.  I still found the show quite non-involving, still found myself watching the staging more than the story.  But, perhaps because I went in expecting that, I found more to admire — mainly, the dancing and the art direction.  It may have helped that, this time, my seats were farther back, better situated to watch pageantry instead of people.

But I also found myself thinking about the show a slightly different way, which is to say not as a standalone from the movie.  Back when I was in elementary school, we were taken one year to see a production of The Magic Flute, and we did not attend it cold.  The group putting it on had issued a study guide and, in advance of our field trip, our teacher explained the plot to us, told us who Papageno and Tamino and Pamina were, and even played us some of the score and told us to watch for certain moments, and what they would symbolize.  We were not taking the field trip to see a story but, rather, to see an interesting interpretation of a story we sort-of already knew.  (In this particular case, we wouldn't have had a prayer of grasping one moment of what occurred on stage without all that briefing.  Even with it, we all were frequently lost.)

It dawned on me last evening that The Lion King, to some extent, works on that level as a theatrical production.  The staging tricks do not always serve the story but it's like, so what?  We already know the story.  We can fill in the blanks.  The movie was the study guide, and inherent in this presentation is a presumption that we already know and are familiar with the movie.  (The Broadway production of The Producers seems to make a similar assumption at times.)

Viewed on that basis, I liked the show more this time around, though I still liked Beauty and the Beast more, probably because it was less about the stage trickery.  I do think The Lion King is a worthy effort, if only for its sheer beauty, but I still don't get why Tony Award voters chose it over Ragtime.  Maybe I'm just bitter because, for all its unprecedented success, I still haven't seen that big jump in my Disney stock dividends.  And that means a lot now that my portfolio has doubled.