www.thestar.com: “The Lion King” is the most anti-Disney stage musical that Disney has ever produced. And that’s why it’s so successful.
Even more than two decades after director Julie Taymor‘s juggernaut production premiered on Broadway, where it continues to run today, the musical feels like a repudiation of the Disney brand.
4 comments:
I find this article really interesting because it brings up the argument of what is considered good theater. The Lion King as the article highlights compares its artistry to many other Disney musicals. The Lion King musical contains magnificent and abstract costumes that portray storytelling at its core. But what about all the other award winning musicals that closely resemble the “silly” Disney musicals? Mean girls, a fan favorite within the younger theater community is not necessarily “artistic” but still continuously sells tickets. Moulin Rouge another well known musical winning 3 different Tony awards is a jukebox musical which can be frowned upon due to its nature to compile previous pieces of music to create something new within the story. Overall I think The Lion King is just a different type of theater. Telling the story through artistry and jaw dropping designs rather than a charismatic character or recognizable pop songs woven together to create a new story.
I believe that the Lion King was the first musical I saw when I was very young and I still remember looking at the plushy of Nala with the full stage opening in the background, it was a truly magical moment. Since then I haven’t seen the Lion King on Broadway but I am very glad it is still going and even expanded to Canada. The costumes of the Lion King fascinate me the most, initially I was confused when I saw them and didn’t understand how they were like the movie animals because I only looked at their faces, but as it went on I found that I focused more on the masks and the story. That is how I learned that not all performances have to be hyper realistic to be a great performance and story. I liked seeing the mix of performer and animal character shown through the costume, which I did also see in the stage adaptation of Spirited away recently, though that was different in that the puppeteers were separate from the focus of action for the most part, but it’s cool to see the similarities that were described in the article
I agree that a show that is able to make audiences feel wowed without much projection, automation, or extra frills is impressive. However, I personally wouldn’t use that as a quantified for what makes a show good or good for its franchise which in this case is Disney. I think the puppets and costuming of the Lion King are often intricate to contrast the sweeping set that usually just represents a cliff or a vast grassland. I think for the Mirvish production it very well may be not a spectacle—but I think one of the main reasons it became a show on Broadway that’s stayed there is because it’s a spectacle. It’s not a massive LED wall of flying car in the air type of show, but the craftsman ship that goes into those hyper detailed garments and the puppet armature is so involved it makes audiences visually stimulated as a spectacle. I don’t know if I agree that it is an unbeatable Disney musical but I definitely see that it’s on its own in terms of style. The musical is very dark in its plot being rooted in Shakespearean tragedy and its music is like none other found in the Disney lineup.
This article has quite an interesting take on a lot of disney’s broadway musicals in the sense that it is surprisingly critical of them. This article most certainly calls out a lot of issues people are seeing in the entertainment industry right now, not even just with theatre but with disney overall. They keep putting out adaptations or live action versions of animated stories over and over again, or just making sequels to already finished stories. I would bet that well over half of the content released by disney in the past few years has been redoing old classics in an attempt to make money and less than half of it has been genuinely new stories. While The Lion King musical is a remake of an old story, it's also much more creatively expressive than a lot of other disney musicals. The designers and directors took risks rather than just playing it safe and doing what they knew would make money. It's interesting to see someone have the guts to call disney out like that in the manner that this article does.
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