The Lion King on Broadway

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Flanger-Hanger
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Post by Flanger-Hanger »

Widdi wrote:While I haven't seen it in New York, I have seen it during it's tenure at The Princess of Whales Theater in Toronto. It wasn't just a play, it was an experience. I would watch this a million times over and would definitely watch it over the movie.
That's where I saw it too. Good theater for that show.
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Post by Simba3 »

PeterPanfan wrote: A lot of people don't like how they changed it a little bit, but really, what did they change?
There aren't many "changes" really, the story is just expanded a bit more. The film is roughly an hour and a half, while the musical is TWO and a half hours. The only part that I thought was really different is that Nala, as well as the rest of the lionesses have a much larger role in this version. Oh, and the fact that Rafiki is played by a woman in the play, but I don't really think that is a big deal though.
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Post by SpringHeelJack »

And Scar tries to get biz-zay with Nala, bom chicka wow woowwwww. And "Morning Report" is in the show whether you like it or not.
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Post by Timon/Pumbaa fan »

It's now been over 5 years since I saw it at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. Loathed it, from opening act to closing act. Nearly every scene was absolutely appalling. A disgrace to what I consider the finest post-Walt Disney animated film.
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Post by PeterPanfan »

Care to fill us on on why you hate it, T/P Fan? :?

I, on the other hand, am very interested in seeing it, and am thinking about buying the OBC CD.
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Post by xxhplinkxx »

PeterPanfan wrote:Care to fill us on on why you hate it, T/P Fan? :?
No real reason, he just seems to hate everything in general. :p
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Post by Sotiris »

'The Lion King' Crowned Broadway's Top Earner of All Time
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/l ... ney-309685
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Post by Elladorine »

SpringHeelJack wrote:And "Morning Report" is in the show whether you like it or not.
I know, I know . . . old quote is old. But I saw the show back when it was still in Vegas and it didn't include "Morning Report."

Thankfully. :D
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Post by SpringHeelJack »

Well NOW it's not. JEEZ.

It was one of the streamlining casualties, was it not, along with "Chow Down." The higher-ups decided to shorten the show for today's addled child by making some cuts after, you know, it had run for 10 years. I think the tour of "Beauty and the Beast" cut some stuff also ("No Matter What" and maybe some other little... thing).

ALSO I LIKE THE MORNING REPORT SO YOU CAN ALL SIT ON A PIN
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Post by Elladorine »

It's just as well that the show was streamlined into something shorter. One of the restless little strangers stepped on my feet several times when trying to walk past my seat. And then Rey lost our car keys after the show . . . fun night, actually.

But yes, there was also no "Chow Down," almost forgot about that. Hadn't listened to the cast recording in forever by the time I actually got to see it. I mainly wanted to see Scar getting all freaky on Nala- er, I mean, I mostly wanted to hear see Shadowlands live. And be treated to a night out. With puppets!
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Post by SpringHeelJack »

I mean, I understand WHY they'd cut it down, but I would prefer to see the show as it had been. I'm not wildly enamored with "Chow Down" and I'd rather see it cut than, say, pretty much any other new song, but it's the principle, man!

From what I can tell in addition to "No Matter What," "Maison des Lunes" was axed from the touring production along with a verse from "Home," and apparently so was the battle between the villagers and the enchanted objects, which just seems profoundly stupid.
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Post by Elladorine »

Holy crap. "Maison De Lunes" was probably my favorite of the new songs. Never really cared to see the Broadway version anyway (unless I could get it on an extremely deep discount) as the costumes seemed sorta weird and gaudy to me. The cast recording was enough to get me by.

And technically speaking, I really would have preferred to see The Lion King in its entirety, but my excitement for it sorta waned in the past decade, and my enjoyment of "The Morning Report" dissipated with that god-awful added scene to the animated film.
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Post by SpringHeelJack »

My problem with a lotttt of "Beauty and the Beast" is that a majority of the songs are superfluous. Like, "No Matter What" is only there so Tom Bosley had something to do. And I know why they added "A Change in Me" but I don't WHY they added "A Change in Me," if you know what I mean. Really for me, the only song that makes an actual effect is "If I Can't Love Her." Much of everything else feels like filler. I wonder sometime if Howard Ashman had still been alive, would the show work better? Ashman was a really smart guy who knew his theater, and I don't see how his input could have hurt in any way.

And yeah, the show was kinda gaudy, but I think a lot of that is because it was Disney's first try at how to do this sort of thing and also because so much of the production team was people from the parks, where that kind of thing plays better. You could see the money, though, and frankly that's what counts most of the time for tourists.

"The Lion King," on the other hand, I still find well done (AND THE MORNING REPORT IS SUCH A FUN SONG LET'S ALL SING IT NOW GUYS K). It had a good balance of Julie Taymor's aesthetics and practicality, presumably because Disney smartly kept her on a pretty tight leash (are you listening, "Spider-man" producers?). The show is intensely theatrical and less theme-parky, which was the smarted thing any of them could have done. Also on the whole, the additional songs play better for me. I'm not sure why that is.
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"The Lion King" comes to Wichita, Sept. 4-30......

Post by dvdjunkie »

Just thought you might like to know that we do have a very diverse culture here in Heartland and this summer the Wichita Theater Company is bringing the New York traveling production of Walt Disney's "The Lion King" to Wichita, Kansas. It will be playing from September 4 through the 30th so everyone will have a chance to see it at least once and hopefully more than that during its run.

The stage production will run nightly at 8 pm, with special matinees on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays through its run. Tickets are pretty reasonable, starting at $54 and running as low as $22. Tickets go on sale tomorrow (Saturday, May 5 at 10 a.m.).

I am really looking forward to seeing the stage version of one of my favorite Disney films. When "Beauty and the Beast" was here two years ago, I saw it three times. I am planning to see "The Lion King" at least twice.
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Re: Broadway Discussion Series: The Lion King

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The director of the stage adaptation of The Lion King revealed that the show had a very different (and a very weird) ending originally.
“In my original idea… [Simba] doesn’t go back at all. That never happened,” she said of Simba returning from his adventures in the jungle at the end of the show to become king. Instead, “He goes to the desert. And in the desert, he comes out of the jungle… And he sees Vegas.”

The audience burst out laughing. “No, seriously!” Taymor said. She proceeded to explain the rest of the story. She wanted to introduce a new villain named Papa Croc who had struck a deal with Scar, the villainous lion from the original story, to buy up all the water in the land. Papa Croc then funneled this water to create a desert oasis: Las Vegas (complete with plays on animals and humans like Papa Croc’s Pussycat Lounge).

“And here comes Simba the wild beast from the jungle, and he falls for Papa Croc because he doesn’t have a father,” Taymor said, as Simba’s father Mufasa dies both in the movie and at the end of the first act of her musical.

But Papa Croc then puts Simba in the Coliseum and forces him to fight against animals from other lands in a brutal animal gladiator show. Needless to say, the head of Disney Theatrical wasn’t thrilled with the idea of a musical that ends with Simba in a fighting pit in Las Vegas.

So Taymor scrapped the idea and instead created the musical everyone’s now familiar with. “It was the right thing that happened in this collaboration,” she said, “Which is he knew we don’t need to go that far, but I figured out how to do the animal and the human,” a collision she had struggled with when starting to conceptualize the show. But this may not be the last you hear of Taymor’s crazy alternate ending: “I still think it would be fun to make,” she said.
Source: http://time.com/4051165/lion-king-music ... te-ending/
“If you know Joseph Campbell and The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Simba has to go through a trial. In the movie, he didn’t go through a trial,” she says. “The prodigal son has to go through hell, basically, before he’s allowed to come back.”

So Taymor came up with a plot line for Act II that would take Simba to an oasis in the desert; it’s a Las Vegas-like city, full of animals who have evolved halfway to human: “lounge lizards” in sharkskin suits and “alley cats” that are like lions, but seedier and more evolved into a human form. “It’s funny and it’s Broadway,” she says. At the heart of it all would be Papa Croc, a villain who has struck a deal with Scar to take water from the desert (hence the drought in the film) to power the electricity in his city. Simba would end up becoming a champion fighter in an arena, earning the nickname “The Lion King,” much to the delight of the “humanimal” spectators.

“Their whole entertainment is watching these wild animals, pre-the-transformation, fight each other. This is really our society,” she says. “In fact, I did The Hunger Games before The Hunger Games.”

The dance form for these fight scenes would be inspired by different kinds of martial arts from around the world. But Simba would have his values tested when Timon and Pumba were caught and put in the ring. Not wanting to fight his friends (and with encouragement from Nala, who has turned up in the oasis), he would escape and return to Pride Rock to defeat Scar and restore water to his community.
Source: http://time.com/4065287/julie-taymor-creative-process/
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Re: Broadway Discussion Series: The Lion King

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That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
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Re: Broadway Discussion Series: The Lion King

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Disney's Divinity wrote:That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
:lol: It really is, isn't it?
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Re: Broadway Discussion Series: The Lion King

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Broadway’s ‘The Lion King’ to Host Free ‘The Circle of Life’ Performance on October 30, RSVP Required
http://www.stitchkingdom.com/disney-bro ... red-79651/


PHOTOS: ‘The Lion King’ Cast to Guest Star on CBS’ ‘Code Black’
http://www.stitchkingdom.com/disney-pho ... ack-79605/
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Re: Broadway Discussion Series: The Lion King

Post by PatrickvD »

What the hell kind of drugs was Julie on when she wrote that?!?! :|
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Re: The Lion King on Broadway

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The stage adaptation has made some changes to be more racially sensitive. It's silly, but I guess it can't hurt.
In “The Lion King,” a pair of longstanding references to the shamanic Rafiki as a monkey — taxonomically correct, since the character is a mandrill — have been excised because of potential racial overtones, given that the role is played by a Black woman.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/23/thea ... tions.html
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