The Lion King is now Fox’s favorite musical. I was honestly surprised because I thought Little Shop would stay his favorite, but The Lion King managed to overtake it. I enjoyed it immensely, but I think I’m fine with it being a one and done for me. I think a lot of the magic probably comes from seeing it for the first time.
We got to the theatre a little later than I’d have liked because Fox forgot his hearing protectors and we had to backtrack to get them. But the line to get in the theatre was still stretching out and around the theatre, even though it was only about 20 minutes until show time! The Minskoff Theatre is very different compared to other Broadway theatres I’ve been in. You have to go down a sort of corridor to get to the front doors, and then there are SO many escalators you have to go up. Although we were at the front of the balcony, so I’m sure we had to go up higher than some of the other patrons. Thankfully we still got into our seats with plenty of room to spare. I think they’ve got getting people into their seats down to a science at that theatre, especially for a Wednesday matinee.
It’s a very powerful show, and it really opens up with a bang. When the woman who played Rafiki was belting out the first notes of The Circle of Life, I already had tears in my eyes. By the end of the song they were streaming down my face. It’s weird, because The Lion King is not one of my favorite Disney movies, and I honestly can’t remember the last time I would have watched it. Certainly it was decades ago, so it’s not like The Lion King is especially meaningful to me. The Circle of Life is just one of those songs where the notes hit me in a certain way. The building of the melody, it kind of swells up inside of you. And with all the gorgeous puppets and amazing dancers, it was an exceptionally beautiful opening number.
Fox really wanted to sit in the balcony, but I wish we had bought orchestra tickets. A giant elephant puppet comes down the aisle, and I would have loved to have seen that one more up close. There were people on four stilts playing giraffes, dancers with zebra puppets, tall poles with wires whipping around flying birds… It was incredibly magical.
The kids playing young Simba and Nala were incredibly talented little triple threats. It always blows me away to think of kids performing on Broadway. Especially when you realize this show has been on Broadway since 1998. That’s an insane amount of kids working long days, as well as rehearsals to keep this show running. And these two kids are in almost all the scenes in the first act.
Mufasa had a lovely voice, and great stage presence. He definitely had the majesty to play the king. Scar was honestly a LITTLE bit underwhelming. The guy was hard to hear sometimes, but I’ll blame that on his mic. But Scar is such a camp villain, and you have the opportunity to really ham things up, and he was very understated.
Rafiki was definitely my favorite. Apart from her incredible singing voice, she was so funny and chattery on stage, engaging with the people down in the front rows. There was one scene where I think she was cycling through multiple African languages, even the one with the clicking sounds. I wish I had any idea what she was saying, but after about five minutes of solid chattering, with her wildly gesticulating to the audience the entire time, she suddenly stopped and said, “Understand?” It got a great laugh.
Zazu the king’s advisor was also very funny, and great at puppeteering. I liked how they modified the scene in the movie where he’s imprisoned by Scar and starts singing songs to annoy him, one of the songs he did was Let It Go.
I was very curious how they were going to do the scene where the wildebeest are stampeding. Because how do you recreate something like that on stage? I don’t want to give away any spoilers for anyone who hasn’t seen the show, but it’s pretty clever how they manage it.
In general, the stage design and sets are very clever. It’s fairly minimal, but in a very artistic way. They often used dancers as stand-ins for grass and trees, and the center of the stage rises up to create pride rock. They also had a very cool set for the elephant graveyard. Speaking of which, the hyena costumes with puppeted heads were especially impressive and really mirrored the movie hyenas very closely.
The scene where Mufasa shows Simba the past kings in the sky was very nicely done as well. You really felt like you were looking up at the night sky along with them.
One of my favorite parts of the whole show was after intermission when several singers started belting out an incredible African song while others joined in and whirled colorful birds with wires over the heads of the audience. Apparently it’s called One By One and is written in Zulu, it was really beautiful to hear and see.
Timon and Pumba don’t even show up until the second act which is funny because they seem like such a big part of the movie. The Timon body puppet is extremely impressive, but I found it odd that they chose to have the person playing him dressed completely in green. I think they did it to try and make him blend in more, but it honestly just made him stand out a lot, and made it look like a weird green man was following Timon around. The Pumba costume was very cute, but both performers did a great job bringing the characters to life.
I don’t have a huge amount of knowledge of African culture, but this show really feels like something of a love letter to Africa and all the diverse nations within it. I love that they took this simple story about a lion, and really turned the musical into something else that both celebrates Africa, and has allowed for so many people of color to perform in it over the years. In looking through the Playbill, so many of the cast members actually came from Africa, as opposed to just being of African descent, and it’s wonderful that this show gives them a space to sing songs in their native languages for such a huge audience day after day. The music, the costumes, the sets, everything felt far more authentically African than I ever imagined a Disney production would be.
At the end, the adult and child versions of Simba and Nala take their bows together and I thought that was very nice, considering they evenly share the part. Fox was a little overwhelmed by the crowd leaving the theatre, but we ducked into a corner of a balcony above a wax figure of Rafiki, and looked out the big window onto Time’s Square while we waited for the crowd to disperse. I thought Fox might want some souvenirs, but he was fine so I ended up just grabbing a magnet for my fridge. I have one for every Broadway show I’ve been to so far. It’s a pricy show, but it’s definitely worth it to see it at least once in your lifetime.
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