Category Archives: Julie Taymor

Yes, Disney’s Lion King is still roaring

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ABOVE: Gerald Ramsey is Mufasa in the North American touring company of The Lion King. Photo by Matthew Murphy ©Disney BELOW: The Lionesses dance. Photo by Deen van Mee ©Disney


This year for the holidays, BroadwaySF is giving us the equivalent of hot cocoa and nachos – comfort theater in the form of Disney’s The Lion King (now at the Orpheum Theatre) and Mamma Mia! beginning next week at the Golden Gate Theatre. The former has been around for 26 years and the latter for 24. While not exactly fresh, they’re reliable, enjoyable and, more to the point, beloved.

I last saw The Lion King about seven years ago at the Orpheum (read my review here), and the current tour feels sturdier in terms of performances and the overall production. It’s still a spectacularly beautiful show, and Disney has obviously invested in maintaining it at a high level. Other touring perennials (looking at you Les Misérables) seem to shrink in every way, making shortcuts (like too much video) and “reimagining” when they mean “reducing the budget.” But The Lion King is still mighty.

The weak tea Shakespearean book is never going to be one of my favorite musical comedy plots (it was fine for the animated feature, but the songs and spectacle could use more), but this King is all about director Julie Taymor’s ultra-theatrical production – a combination South African cultural festival, modern dance program (thank you, choreographer Garth Fagan) and phantasmagorical explosion of world puppet and mask traditions.

Taymor has blended her outsize theatrical vision with the more mundane aspects of the movie (comic relief, winky modern references, cardboard cutout bad guys) so that the 2 1/2-hour show moves expertly along, but it definitely feels like Taymor was way more invested in conveying the essence and beauty of African nature and wildlife than in the mechanics of storytelling.

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There are two knockout numbers in Act 1, the processional, magisterial “Circle of Life” and the exuberant, dazzling “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King,” alongside the still-dazzling effect of a wildebeest stampede. Which leaves Act 2 rather barren of high points. The act opener, a straightforward human musical number called “One by One” is charming, and then we get the nearly great “He Lives in You (Reprise)” to close the show. Before the curtain calls, we get a reprise of “Circle of Life” and more amazing animals, but nothing really new other than plot resolution, and that comes way too easily and predictably (kind of like in a Marvel movie).

But here’s what’s so great about The Lion Knig – it’s easy to love for anyone of any age. For many kids, this is their first taste of live theater, and it’s sophisticated in its theatricality while still being easy to digest. There’s a darkness to it (stemming from a lot of death in the story) that sits easily alongside the brighter moments, and the inherent message about maintaining the balance of nature, is no small accomplishment.

In this touring company, special shout out to Julian Villela as Young Simba (sharing the role with Mason Lawason), a star in the making. Charming, assured and affecting, Villela commands the stage like an absolute pro. Gerald Ramsey as Mufasa also makes a strong impression, especially vocally on “They Live in You.” I tend to resist the cornball schtick of Timon and Pumbaa, but Nick Cordileone and John E. Brady respectively are pitch perfect.

On Broadway and around the world, The Lion King musical has reportedly raked in over $8 billion. That’s astonishing. But given the rapturous response of Wednesday’s opening-night audience, it’s not all that surprising. It’s well made, beautifully produced entertainment. It raised the bar for Disney’s theatrical pursuits, a bar the mighty Mouse still hasn’t surpassed.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Disney’s The Lion King continues through Dec. 30 as part of the BroadwaySF season at the Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco. Tickets are $66.50-$300.50 (subject to change). Running time: 2 hours and 30 minutes (including one intermission). Call or visit broadwaysf.com.

Even The Lion King seems political now

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Buyi Zama is Rafiki in the North American tour of Disney’s The Lion King, at SHN’s Orpheum Theatre. Below: Nia Holloway is Nala” with the Lionesses. Photos by Joan Marcus. ©Disney

The “mane” question is this: after nearly 20 years, does Disney’s The Lion King, now the highest grossing Broadway show of all time, still have any roar left? Based on the touring production that has settled into SHN’s Orpheum Theatre for a two-month run through the holidays, the answer is a qualified yes.

From the outset, when the 1994 animated hit leaped to the stage in 1997, the strength of the production has rested solely on director Julie Taymor’s vision for adapting cartoon to live theater. Rather than rely solely on blockbuster special effects, Taymor and her creative team leaned in the direction of traditional and inventive puppetry, gorgeous (sometimes surprising) costumes and masks that rarely cover a performer’s face. The result is something that feels highly theatrical and imaginative but also remains true to the movie, which is a simplified spin on Hamlet set in the African savannah. The score, primarily by Elton John (music) and Tim Rice (lyrics), has a sweet poppy appeal (“Hakuna Matata”, “Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King,” the majestic “The Circle of Life”). But the real heft of the show’s music comes from Lebo M, a South African composer whose contributions, including the rousing Act 2 opener “One by One” and the show’s best number, “He Lives in You (Reprise),” lend an authenticity and uncommon beauty to the Broadway trimmings.

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Having made over a billion dollars worldwide, The Lion King is a massive industry built on solid, crowd-pleasing craftsmanship. The show, at 2 1/2 hours, is a little slow, and pacing in this tour can be patchy. At Wednesday’s opening-night performance, there was some unfortunately persistent audio feedback in Act 1 that was followed, about 30 minutes in, by a five-minute break while technical issues were addressed. Not what you expect from a show where top ticket price is over $200, but hey, live theater is truly live.

The spectacle of The Lion King remains mostly undimmed. The opening procession of The Circle of Life still packs a punch, even if the animal parade seems less full than it once was, and the quieter moments in the show – the lionesses in mourning, the grasslands (in the form of enormous hats) swaying in the wind, Simba’s cris de coeur “Endless Night” under the stars – tend to be more powerful than the noisier numbers. The hyenas’ song “Chow Down” has always been a lowlight of the show and is especially so here.

It’s interesting to see The Lion King in the midst of this nightmare election season. Scar, the egotistical, power-hungry villain, seems awfully familiar, and his grab at power just for the sake of power and his wanton destruction of the pride lands to fuel his own needs, seems a stern warning. The kids who grew up with The Lion King both on film and on stage are of voting age now. Let’s hope its lesson to keep the circle of life healthy and free of narcissistic villains intent on destruction.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Disney’s The Lion King continues through Dec. 31 at SHN’s Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco. Tickets are $55-$228 (subject to change). Call 888-746-1799 or visit www.shnsf.com.

Disney’s Lion King roaring back to San Francisco

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Jelani Remy as Simba and the ensemble in “He Lives in You” from the touring production of Disney’s The Lion King. Photo by Joan Marcus

 

According to the Wall Street Journal, the King really is the King of Broadway.

News came down last month that Disney’s The Lion King is now Broadway’s all-time highest grossing show. It’s a title the regal hit stole from The Phantom of the Opera. The cumulative gross is staggering: $853,846,062 and counting.

Timing of the news couldn’t have come at a better time. Lion King‘s Tony Award-winning director, Julie Taymor, happened to be in town with producer and president of Disney Theatrical Productions President, Thomas Schumacher. They were with a small group at Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville to promote the return of The Lion King to San Francisco this November as part of the SHN season at the Orpheum Theatre. That’s the same theater where the show made its Bay Area debut in 2004 and ran for 43 weeks.

Schumacher, a San Mateo native, was working in Disney’s animation division when The Lion King first began to make noise. “I realize I’ve been working in way or another on The Lion King, practically on a daily basis for 21 years,” Schumacher said. He remembers reading a four –page treatment called King of the Beasts, which was sort of like an animated National Geographic special. The movie, after the usual years of revisions and rewrites, went on to become an international smash movie with a musical score by Elton John and Tim Rice.

Julie Taymor

When talk turned to the possibility of bringing The Lion King to the stage as Disney had done successfully with Beauty and the Beast, Disney’s chairman at the time, Michael Eisner, whom Schumacher called a “brilliant but nutty guy,” wasn’t at all enamored of the lion idea. Schumacher remembers him saying something like, “Andrew Lloyd Webber already did a musical with cats.”

But Schumacher said he had a great idea. He called up that great idea, who happened to be Taymor, the rather brilliant off-Broadway and international opera director who is one of the last people you’d associate with a Disney musical based on an animated film.

Taymor remembered thinking it wasn’t all that much of a stretch to think of her applying her artistic talents to the Disney project. The film, after all, had a dark beauty to it. “When you think about it, the film is about a young child witnessing the death of his father.”

Having worked in Asia and absorbed many aspects of theater and puppetry there, Taymor was intrigued by the challenge and was delighted that Schumacher and his colleagues seemed open to her aesthetic.

“I don’t think we could open The Lion King today,” Schumacher said. “It took a certain renegade spirit to do it, and we wouldn’t have the same freedom today.”

When The Lion King opened on Broadway in the fall of 1997, it didn’t look like anything else in New York. It still doesn’t. With its extraordinary puppetry, masks, costumes and theatrical effects – many of which are centuries old – it’s an original fusion of international theater techniques combined with Taymor’s overriding vision, which makes it all feel of a piece.

The signature theme of the evening, visually speaking, is the circle – “The Circle of Life” is the centerpiece song of the show (and the basis for its jaw-dropping opening scene) – a theme you see in everything from the rising of the sun to the spinning of wheels as puppet deer leap across the stage on little wagons.

“It would be easy to do a sunrise projection,” Taymor explained. “But that would not be live theater. I wanted to stay away from anything like film. This was already a film. So our sun is bamboo and silk. Our audience knows that, but as it rises, light shimmering across it, it’s filled with spirit and soul.”

She also described the show as “magic and toys,” which are “the spirit of theater. It’s in our DNA going way back. It’s not about thinking. It’s about feeling.”

Taymor calls working on The Lion King “the most enjoyable work experience I’ve had…and here I am 15 years later.”

[bonus video]

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Disney’s The Lion King runs Nov. 1 through Jan. 13 at the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco. Tickets are available as part of SHN’s 2012-13 season package. Subscriptions range from $197.50 to $567.50. Call 888-746-1799 or visit www.shnsf.com.

Beatlemania

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I need to get the embarrassing details out there here at the start: The first versions of Beatles songs I ever grew to love were – gulp – on the double-album soundtrack of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the 1978 disaster starring Peter Frampton, the Bee Gees, Steve Martin, George Burns, Aerosmith and Earth, Wind & Fire.

Yes, it’s true. I didn’t hear John, Paul, George and Ringo’s “Strawberry Fields” first. I heard Sandy Farina’s. And I loved it.

Eventually I came to my senses (ie, I grew up) and heard the Beatles’ “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and actually enjoyed it more than Steve Martin’s.

Which brings me to my current fascination: the movie musical Across the Universe.

This is a safe space to talk about musicals, of course, but there is some real theater cred at work here in the person of director Julie Taymor, the Tony Award-winning director of Disney’s The Lion King.

In case you don’t know what Across the Universe is, it’s the story of the 1960s, from the carefree early days (the last vestiges of the fabulous ‘50s) to the war-torn, protest-filled, assassination-laden end of the decade. And it’s all told using Beatles songs sung by the actors.

Think of Grease, Hair, Tommy (and even High School Musical comes to mind in a gymnasium scene involving basketballs) and Moulin Rouge and you’ll begin to get Taymor’s fantastical approach.

I loved this movie. I’ve seen it twice and fallen hard for the soundtrack (the complete double-disc version on iTunes rather than the abbreviated single-disc version on store shelves). You either get on board for this and let Taymor and her cohorts dazzle your mind and heart or you just sit there thinking: This is stupid. Give me my Beatles CDs and I’ll just slit my wrists now.

Clearly I was in the former category. It’s hard not to dig a movie that recasts “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” as a lesbian cheerleader’s heart-rending ballad directed to a fellow cheerleader. T.V. Carpio is the actress playing the role, and she’s fabulous.

So is Evan Rachel Wood as Lucy and Jim Sturgess as Jude, the young lovers – she from upper middle-class America, he from lower working-class Liverpool – caught up in the changing tides of the storm-tossed decade. Both sing beautifully (she’s got a sweet vibrato, and he sounds like Ewan MacGregor).

The best scenes are the most theatrical: Sturgess singing “I’ve Just Seen a Face” (a truly fabulous song I didn’t previously know, which gives me renewed interest in exploring the ENTIRE Beatles back catalogue) in a bowling alley. In terms of movie musical bowling alley scenes, it’s much better than “Score Tonight” from Grease 2.

Other highlights include a frat-boyish “With a Little Help from My Friends,” a dynamic “I Want You/She’s So Heavy” with some great dancing and masks (with Taymor, of course there are masks) and a soul-stirring gospel “Let It Be” that takes place during the Detroit riots.

How remarkable is it that this year we’ve had two wildly different, wildly enjoyable movie musicals (the other one being, of course, Hairspray)? Across the Universe certainly isn’t for every taste, but musical lovers – and you know who you are – will eat it up.

And to all those Beatles purists out there who can’t stomach the notion of actors (and Joe Cocker and Bono and Eddie Izzard) covering Beatles songs, I have this to say: I was introduced to the Beatles through a terrible movie, and made my way eventually to the lads from Liverpool. Across the Universe, which is a whole lot better, more intelligent and artistically alive, will lead a whole new generation to discover for themselves why the Beatles are so extraordinary and so phenomenally timeless.

Finally, “Let It Be” is sung, primarily, by Carol Woods, a veteran stage performer who just happens to be the best thing in Blues in the Night, the hit musical revue now at San Francisco’s Post Street Theatre. She’s the best thing in the show, and you shouldn’t miss her.

Here’s the trailer:

There are more clips and sound bytes at the official site here.