The Lion King Roars Into Town
Phindile Mkhize as “Rafiki” in the opening number “The Circle of Life” from THE LION KING National Tour. © Disney. Photo credit: Joan Marcus.
(Forgive the most obvious headline ever. We're distracted by the glowing orb in the sky.)
Anyway, to the matter at hand: The Lion King. You know the story. The powerful king who's loved and respected by all sires a precocious cub. Uncle kills the king and sends the boy on his way, assumes the thrown, darkness and misery ensue. Meanwhile, far away, the boy grows into a man, befriends an ambiguously gay duo of meerkat and warthog, sings and dances, eats grubs. His childhood BFF happens upon him, they fall in love and he returns to best his uncle in a mighty duel and take back Pride Rock for all that's good in the world. We know people hate it when we ruin the endings of theater productions, but if you haven't seen even the animated film version of TLK by now, you earned that.
We saw it on Broadway back in the summer of 2001. Before 9/11. Before years of despair, violence, famine, and disaster even seemed plausible. Before we knew what havoc a misguided leader who just wanted to be respected could wreak on the free world. We hadn't yet begun the long slog through the thick muck of mismanagement, which was so long that envisioning an end to that path was impossible; hadn't yet gotten unwittingly sucked into the idealistic machine of Hope and Change and spat out then other end renewed and relieved. Back in the summer of 2001, it was still enough to be completely awed by costumes, music, the impossible fantasy of a storyline.
Since then, we've discovered what it feels like to live in the day-to-day workings of a world taking itself from destruction to construction, and the fantasy element of The Lion King rang a little too true for us to just sit there and focus on how awesome the giraffes' and cheetah's costumes were. We still admired those things, still adore any musical element in the world that Elton John so much as looks at, and still raised our eyebrows at the athleticism of the choreography. But the fantasy element just seemed...lost this time around. Call us jaded, but when young Simba's "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" unfolded with all the alien-looking animals and trippy, balloonish giraffes, we found ourselves longing for something real, something to sink our teeth into. Something that mirrored our world a little better and helped make sense of what we've just surmounted. We wondered if, eight years from now, we'll be able to return to The Lion King with the same delight and careless imagination that was so accessible in the summer of '01 and now just feels a little out of touch.
That said, Timothy Carter's Scar was a show-stealer, while Rafiki (Phindile Mkhize), Mufasa (Dionne Randolph) and the adult Nala (Dan'yelle Williamson) all delivered outstanding performances (Williamson's voice gave us an "Oh my God!" moment). But we have to say the part that delighted us the most was at the end, when Barack and Michelle Obama Simba and Nala ascended to the top of Pride Rock, the animals bowed, the cool bird stick things flew around in circles, and "The Circle of Life" reprised with all its Elton John-ish fabulousness. Only then did we feel like anything really made sense and the whole thing was worth it. Go figure.
The Lion King dates and showtimes // The Paramount // $19.50-$75
