Buzz Blog

It takes only a few minutes of the touring production of Disney's The Lion King for anyone unfamiliar with this version to realize it’s a completely different beast from its film cousins. That’s when the aisles of the Eccles Theater become part of the procession to Pride Rock for the presentation of the young lion prince Simba, as actors in massive costume frames bring elephants, rhinos and other creatures of the savannah close enough to touch. It’s an eye-popping demonstration of stagecraft—and it’s a magnificent demonstration of how many different ways there can be to tell a story with genuine creativity.

Julie Taymor’s stage adaptation of the 1994 Disney animated hit is itself 25 years old by now, so the particulars of how she visualizes the narrative—still a loose interpretation of Hamlet, with the young lion Simba (played as a youth during this performance by Jaylen Lyndon Hunter, and as an adult by Darian Sanders) dealing with the death of his father Mufasa (Gerald Ramsey) and the usurpation of the throne by his uncle Scar (Spencer Plachy)—might already be familiar in theory to theater-goers. From elaborate headdresses to puppets, from shadow-play to birds spun overhead on wires, animal characters are brought to life in every conceivable way. And nearly every one of those ways contributes a sense of mystery, majesty and emotion distinct from the playfulness of the source-material, while still remaining family-friendly.

Structurally, the stage version takes some getting used to for anyone with dozens of viewings of The Lion King ’94 in their heads. All of the familiar Elton John/Tim Rice tunes are present and accounted for—“I Just Can’t Wait to Be King,” “Hakuna Matata,” “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” and more—but they’re weighted heavily into the first act, leaving a second act that emphasizes other songs with a less playful side. Several dance and musical numbers lean into the African roots of the “Nants’ Ingonyama” chant from “Circle of Life,” with boldly colored costumes and Zulu lyrics by Lebo M. For all the Shakespearean underpinnings of the source material, this one is much more steeped in the tragedy than in the comic relief, as entertaining as the playfully crude banter of Timon (Tony Freeman) and Pumbaa (John E. Brady) remains.

Yet I don’t think it’s a disservice to the quality of the performances—and they’re uniformly wonderful, especially given the unique demands of the physical performances in these costumes—to suggest that this Lion King is primarily a tribute to the power of stagecraft. When Mufasa’s face appears in the “sky” as a group of huge puzzle pieces drifting together, it’s a truly gasp-inducing moment. A watering hole dries up via a cloth pulled into a hole in the stage, and lighting design accentuates the terrors of an elephant graveyard. Where many film-to-stage adaptations do their darndest to maintain a “the movie you loved, but life and in person” vibe, The Lion King revels in the things that only a stage version could ever do.

The 2019 CGI-animated remake of The Lion King was a huge hit, but artistically, it was a reminder that a story is only as effective as the artistic choices that go into telling it—and that photorealistic animals for this story was just … wrong. On stage, Disney's The Lion King is spectacle of the first order, a joyous and emotionally resonant interpretation exploding with imagination. However many times you’ve heard “Circle of Life” before, it just hits differently when that circle of life feels undeniably alive.

Disney's The Lion King runs at the Eccles Theater (131 S. Main St.) through Oct. 23. Tickets are available at arttix.org.