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:twitch:... Must... relate... experience... :falls over and narrates from the ground:
I was reduced to (quiet) hysterical sobs by the end of the opening number, which everyone should know (riiight?)... There was an antelope three feet away from me (we were in the lowest balcony), doing call-and-response with Rafiki on the stage and the antelope on the other side, very visceral. The boom at the end was even better than the one in the movies in the theater. It had a five-second reverb through the hall, and I felt it to my very guts. There's something about that music... the elephants and the rhinos came down through the aisles, with the baby elephant holding on to the big one's tail... it was a kid in the puppet, too, with just the right amount of hesitation and cute confused babyness. The giraffes were tall, the gazelles were leaping, the zebras were stamping, and Rafiki was perfect. I think they changed him from the movie into a she, because the range is better for cutting through the orchestra, and the lady who played her was absolutely perfect.
And Scar... my favorite character, obviously... His delivery was very close to the original Jeremy Irons, because you can't improve on it much. There was the little mouse shadow on the backgrounds screen, a puppet scurrying along to a maraca... just perfect. The opening mouse. And then Zazu wings in. He's perfect, too. The puppet is a life-size bird, and the guy manipulating it is in a blue suit with tails, and orange highlights, and the perfect majordomo demeanor. The puppet was perfect. The guy was perfect. There were very few things in the whole show that weren't perfect. And then Mufasa came on the scene, nicely regal, I loved the masks. They moved with the heads, as well as up and down when they leaned over... hard to describe. Perfect, though. Then to Rafiki's tree, which was drawn black on a transparent backdrop, with little symboly designs for leaves. Drawing the Simba sign on the trunk. Perfect little chants to go with it, different from the movie. There were a lot of things different from the movie. Some better. Zazu had a song when he did The Morning Report, but either his mike was too low (Scar's was, the whole show. pity, he had the perfect bass evil voice), or he just didn't have a penetrating timbre, because a lot of the time you couldn't tell what he was saying, despite his great diction. It was combined with the pouncing lesson dialogue, and they did a good job of keeping puppeteer and bird integrated with the pouncing... The kid did a good kitty, though otherwise his acting wasn't exceptional.
They kept all the jokes from the movie, changing some a little and adding a few more. Then came one minor disappointment: neither of the cubs can sing, at all. Sometimes it was painful. The beginning of I Just Can't Wait had veeery stylized animals, just like the movie. That was one thing that was cool, they didn't even pretend to try for realism. It was all very stylized, in a lifelike way, but not realistic. It was great. Mama really liked that. The sets were miraculous. They added a piece of stage on top of the stage that had 17 tracks in it for stuff to move on like trains, all computerized. The elephant graveyard was especially cool. The hyenas! They were also perfect. Their puppetness was so minimal, it was like the people were in fursuits except with a head on one hand with a foof of hyena mohawk running from it to their heads, so their heads were the hump on the back, the shoulderblades, and their back ran down to the short hyena hindquarters, and their arms had extensions for hyena feet. Perfect shape. Ingenious. They added a song called Chow Down right after the part about the birdie boiler, after Zazu's gone and the cubs are being chased, and it was sort of integrated into the original movie chase music. Mufasa's roar as he rescued them wasn't terribly convincing, but it was okay. The bit under the stars when he was teaching him a lesson... that was good.
They added a song for it, of which several fragments got repeated throughout the show. Very catchy, good song. I think it was in TLK2. They Live In You. Then came another minor disappointment, partially the fault of Scar's mike people. Be Prepared is my favorite song, except for the stampede music (which was also disappointing). The staging was almost exact in its faithfulness to the movie, the squares of marching hyenas in yellow spotlights after the "of course, quid pro quo, you're expected to take certain duties on board". Scar played up his infirmity (he had a wicked-looking cane), so he didn't do the lovely catlike leaping against walls at the beginning of the song, but he did cool rhythmic stuff with the stick. And his moving mask. There were times you looked at his face, times you looked at his mask. Both were thoroughly, beatifully, arrogantly evil. And the lighting! Aah!
Then came the gorge scene. Dialogue exactly the same, as usual. The stage was separated into three parts, up-and-downstage-wise. There were cliff walls on either side, hide-behind-able, and a machine of tumbling leaping wildebeests in the one farthest back, dancers with medium masks on the next step in the middle, and dancers with big masks on the ground in the front. All undulating and stampeding perfectly. Actually, to give him credit that shall not be repeated very often, the kid ran in place reasonably convincingly. A tree branch came down from the sky, and Simba floated up to it on a string, was rescued, and carried (I love how that looks, carrying people in arms. I wanna do that) off to the side middle cliff, and the whole Brother Help Me thing was carried out. The fall was spectacular; he was on a fly, falling about a foot per second in a red light and a strobe. I was expecting to burst into tears at this point, but the kid was so awful at getting the emotions across, I was mightily disappointed. He ran out into th audience as he was told, and the hyenas didn't follow him, the whole thorns-in-the-butt thing was left out. The cliffs melted away, except for the one Mufasa was lying on, which was used as a funeral bier for the Be Prepared reprise... the lionesses' tears were really cool! There were little strips of cloth or something that came out of the eyes of their masks and fluttered as they wailed Africanly... beautiful. They stayed crying until Simba came back.
Kite buzzards on a stick twirled convincingly over Simba, then Timon (who looked like a stuffed animal, very faithful to the cartoon, with a vividly green guy behind him controlling. He was Lumiere in B&tB and they changed a few of the jokes to reference that) and Pumbaa (cartoonish and lifelike at the same time... um, lessee. His hair was the guy's head, and his arms were in the jaws, and his feet were the front feet with a frame built after his back... the hindquarters and back legs moved coordinatedly with the front. very good) went buzzard bowling. They didn't carry him off, though I don't know how they could have accomplished that... just woke him up and went to the forest and about their business... Hakuna Matata. The jungle was a little sparse, but there were absolutely gorgeoues plant dancers, some were grass.. just wow. Intermission.
Opening the second act was a song we'd sung a modified version of, in Girls' Chorus. Fuun song, wasn't in the movie. African Chorale called One by One All in Swahili except those words. Fun tongue-clicking. There was a lady with a kite-bird on a stick a foot away from us (we moved up two rows to the front row of the boxes, cause nobody was there), instead of an antelope. There were about 10 birds on kites, spread throughout the hall. Lights! Fun. Then came the scene with Zazu in a ribcage (the person controller didn't show, musta been behind the set; it rolled in on the tracks, a coupla big skeletons), singing to Scar... he started with Nobody Knows the Trouble, then when Scar said with a little bounce in it (exactly the same accented delivery as in the movie), Zazu broke into Be Our Guest from B&tB instead of It's a Small World... no coconuts, though. Then Scar had a really cool song about his deprived childhood and how he wanted to be adored like Mufasa was as king, and the hyenas came in and did the bone-picking thing... I know this movie too well.
The change I liked most, maybe with the exception of Rafiki, was the emphasis placed on Nala and her journey. She got a whole, beautiful song about it, and she was GOOD. She had some really lovely heavy low notes, and a plaintive melody, and cat grace moving away from the symbolic wall of people/lionesses. Ah, I now have two dreams; 1., Cats. 2., TLK. Then there was a fadeout to Simba and them in the jungle, the debate verbatim about the stars, the ridicule, but this time the song had only a hint of the instrumental theme in the movie, he had a whole Endless Night number about how You Promised You'd Be There for Me, and Rafiki caught the sound instead of the smell, in her tortoiseshell. There was a sort of cut-screen so you could see them both at the same time, she in her tree.. He's Alive! It Is Time. There was a whole scene explaining how Simba had been wanting to move through the forest to find the perfect spot, since nonoe of it felt "right", and then there was the Lion Sleeps Tonight and Nala/Pumbaa chase scene, with cool shadow puppetry and live-action combinations that were just stunning. Verbatim recognization, they changed the song a little teeny bit at the end to include some of the Elton John version. Verbatim tiff and stamping off, then Simba meets Rafiki, whose chant is not, in fact, Asante Sana, Squash Banana. She has a whole new thing, and doesn't make him chase her around, he has actual water to splash in his reflection, and Mufasa's avatar is not a stormcloud (at least I think not... I couldn't really tell. It was brown?), though she made the same reference to the weather after that song, and there was a reprise of He Lives In You, which is cool. He leaves with his bump, Nala scares Timon & Pumbaa awake and discovers from Rafiki who is swinging on a vine that he has gone back, mostly same dialogue as the movie. Scar? Who has a scar?
Back in the USSR, they creep along the cliff that is creeping along the stage, Scar screams for Sarabi, and all that... Oh yeah! Instead of live bait dressing in drag and doing the hula, he does the Charleston! Very good. Hyenas leave, Scar yells, hits Sarabi, Simba reveals himself, fight scene verbatim from the movie except with cool lighting and slight worriment for the actors not-really-dangling for the cliff. When Scar goes down, it's in silhouette against an extremely red backdrop, hyenas screaming hysterically. Ah, nostalgia... everything else is exactly as it is from the movie. Circle of Life reprise, Simba roaring (rather humanishly)... wait, the lionesses don't roar back. Which is good. I always thought that was kind of odd. kite birds, zebras, giraffes, gazelles, antelopes galore, only the baby elephant, but the rhino... big boom. Curtain calls.
Happiness! Biiiig boom.
I was reduced to (quiet) hysterical sobs by the end of the opening number, which everyone should know (riiight?)... There was an antelope three feet away from me (we were in the lowest balcony), doing call-and-response with Rafiki on the stage and the antelope on the other side, very visceral. The boom at the end was even better than the one in the movies in the theater. It had a five-second reverb through the hall, and I felt it to my very guts. There's something about that music... the elephants and the rhinos came down through the aisles, with the baby elephant holding on to the big one's tail... it was a kid in the puppet, too, with just the right amount of hesitation and cute confused babyness. The giraffes were tall, the gazelles were leaping, the zebras were stamping, and Rafiki was perfect. I think they changed him from the movie into a she, because the range is better for cutting through the orchestra, and the lady who played her was absolutely perfect.
And Scar... my favorite character, obviously... His delivery was very close to the original Jeremy Irons, because you can't improve on it much. There was the little mouse shadow on the backgrounds screen, a puppet scurrying along to a maraca... just perfect. The opening mouse. And then Zazu wings in. He's perfect, too. The puppet is a life-size bird, and the guy manipulating it is in a blue suit with tails, and orange highlights, and the perfect majordomo demeanor. The puppet was perfect. The guy was perfect. There were very few things in the whole show that weren't perfect. And then Mufasa came on the scene, nicely regal, I loved the masks. They moved with the heads, as well as up and down when they leaned over... hard to describe. Perfect, though. Then to Rafiki's tree, which was drawn black on a transparent backdrop, with little symboly designs for leaves. Drawing the Simba sign on the trunk. Perfect little chants to go with it, different from the movie. There were a lot of things different from the movie. Some better. Zazu had a song when he did The Morning Report, but either his mike was too low (Scar's was, the whole show. pity, he had the perfect bass evil voice), or he just didn't have a penetrating timbre, because a lot of the time you couldn't tell what he was saying, despite his great diction. It was combined with the pouncing lesson dialogue, and they did a good job of keeping puppeteer and bird integrated with the pouncing... The kid did a good kitty, though otherwise his acting wasn't exceptional.
They kept all the jokes from the movie, changing some a little and adding a few more. Then came one minor disappointment: neither of the cubs can sing, at all. Sometimes it was painful. The beginning of I Just Can't Wait had veeery stylized animals, just like the movie. That was one thing that was cool, they didn't even pretend to try for realism. It was all very stylized, in a lifelike way, but not realistic. It was great. Mama really liked that. The sets were miraculous. They added a piece of stage on top of the stage that had 17 tracks in it for stuff to move on like trains, all computerized. The elephant graveyard was especially cool. The hyenas! They were also perfect. Their puppetness was so minimal, it was like the people were in fursuits except with a head on one hand with a foof of hyena mohawk running from it to their heads, so their heads were the hump on the back, the shoulderblades, and their back ran down to the short hyena hindquarters, and their arms had extensions for hyena feet. Perfect shape. Ingenious. They added a song called Chow Down right after the part about the birdie boiler, after Zazu's gone and the cubs are being chased, and it was sort of integrated into the original movie chase music. Mufasa's roar as he rescued them wasn't terribly convincing, but it was okay. The bit under the stars when he was teaching him a lesson... that was good.
They added a song for it, of which several fragments got repeated throughout the show. Very catchy, good song. I think it was in TLK2. They Live In You. Then came another minor disappointment, partially the fault of Scar's mike people. Be Prepared is my favorite song, except for the stampede music (which was also disappointing). The staging was almost exact in its faithfulness to the movie, the squares of marching hyenas in yellow spotlights after the "of course, quid pro quo, you're expected to take certain duties on board". Scar played up his infirmity (he had a wicked-looking cane), so he didn't do the lovely catlike leaping against walls at the beginning of the song, but he did cool rhythmic stuff with the stick. And his moving mask. There were times you looked at his face, times you looked at his mask. Both were thoroughly, beatifully, arrogantly evil. And the lighting! Aah!
Then came the gorge scene. Dialogue exactly the same, as usual. The stage was separated into three parts, up-and-downstage-wise. There were cliff walls on either side, hide-behind-able, and a machine of tumbling leaping wildebeests in the one farthest back, dancers with medium masks on the next step in the middle, and dancers with big masks on the ground in the front. All undulating and stampeding perfectly. Actually, to give him credit that shall not be repeated very often, the kid ran in place reasonably convincingly. A tree branch came down from the sky, and Simba floated up to it on a string, was rescued, and carried (I love how that looks, carrying people in arms. I wanna do that) off to the side middle cliff, and the whole Brother Help Me thing was carried out. The fall was spectacular; he was on a fly, falling about a foot per second in a red light and a strobe. I was expecting to burst into tears at this point, but the kid was so awful at getting the emotions across, I was mightily disappointed. He ran out into th audience as he was told, and the hyenas didn't follow him, the whole thorns-in-the-butt thing was left out. The cliffs melted away, except for the one Mufasa was lying on, which was used as a funeral bier for the Be Prepared reprise... the lionesses' tears were really cool! There were little strips of cloth or something that came out of the eyes of their masks and fluttered as they wailed Africanly... beautiful. They stayed crying until Simba came back.
Kite buzzards on a stick twirled convincingly over Simba, then Timon (who looked like a stuffed animal, very faithful to the cartoon, with a vividly green guy behind him controlling. He was Lumiere in B&tB and they changed a few of the jokes to reference that) and Pumbaa (cartoonish and lifelike at the same time... um, lessee. His hair was the guy's head, and his arms were in the jaws, and his feet were the front feet with a frame built after his back... the hindquarters and back legs moved coordinatedly with the front. very good) went buzzard bowling. They didn't carry him off, though I don't know how they could have accomplished that... just woke him up and went to the forest and about their business... Hakuna Matata. The jungle was a little sparse, but there were absolutely gorgeoues plant dancers, some were grass.. just wow. Intermission.
Opening the second act was a song we'd sung a modified version of, in Girls' Chorus. Fuun song, wasn't in the movie. African Chorale called One by One All in Swahili except those words. Fun tongue-clicking. There was a lady with a kite-bird on a stick a foot away from us (we moved up two rows to the front row of the boxes, cause nobody was there), instead of an antelope. There were about 10 birds on kites, spread throughout the hall. Lights! Fun. Then came the scene with Zazu in a ribcage (the person controller didn't show, musta been behind the set; it rolled in on the tracks, a coupla big skeletons), singing to Scar... he started with Nobody Knows the Trouble, then when Scar said with a little bounce in it (exactly the same accented delivery as in the movie), Zazu broke into Be Our Guest from B&tB instead of It's a Small World... no coconuts, though. Then Scar had a really cool song about his deprived childhood and how he wanted to be adored like Mufasa was as king, and the hyenas came in and did the bone-picking thing... I know this movie too well.
The change I liked most, maybe with the exception of Rafiki, was the emphasis placed on Nala and her journey. She got a whole, beautiful song about it, and she was GOOD. She had some really lovely heavy low notes, and a plaintive melody, and cat grace moving away from the symbolic wall of people/lionesses. Ah, I now have two dreams; 1., Cats. 2., TLK. Then there was a fadeout to Simba and them in the jungle, the debate verbatim about the stars, the ridicule, but this time the song had only a hint of the instrumental theme in the movie, he had a whole Endless Night number about how You Promised You'd Be There for Me, and Rafiki caught the sound instead of the smell, in her tortoiseshell. There was a sort of cut-screen so you could see them both at the same time, she in her tree.. He's Alive! It Is Time. There was a whole scene explaining how Simba had been wanting to move through the forest to find the perfect spot, since nonoe of it felt "right", and then there was the Lion Sleeps Tonight and Nala/Pumbaa chase scene, with cool shadow puppetry and live-action combinations that were just stunning. Verbatim recognization, they changed the song a little teeny bit at the end to include some of the Elton John version. Verbatim tiff and stamping off, then Simba meets Rafiki, whose chant is not, in fact, Asante Sana, Squash Banana. She has a whole new thing, and doesn't make him chase her around, he has actual water to splash in his reflection, and Mufasa's avatar is not a stormcloud (at least I think not... I couldn't really tell. It was brown?), though she made the same reference to the weather after that song, and there was a reprise of He Lives In You, which is cool. He leaves with his bump, Nala scares Timon & Pumbaa awake and discovers from Rafiki who is swinging on a vine that he has gone back, mostly same dialogue as the movie. Scar? Who has a scar?
Back in the USSR, they creep along the cliff that is creeping along the stage, Scar screams for Sarabi, and all that... Oh yeah! Instead of live bait dressing in drag and doing the hula, he does the Charleston! Very good. Hyenas leave, Scar yells, hits Sarabi, Simba reveals himself, fight scene verbatim from the movie except with cool lighting and slight worriment for the actors not-really-dangling for the cliff. When Scar goes down, it's in silhouette against an extremely red backdrop, hyenas screaming hysterically. Ah, nostalgia... everything else is exactly as it is from the movie. Circle of Life reprise, Simba roaring (rather humanishly)... wait, the lionesses don't roar back. Which is good. I always thought that was kind of odd. kite birds, zebras, giraffes, gazelles, antelopes galore, only the baby elephant, but the rhino... big boom. Curtain calls.
Happiness! Biiiig boom.
From: (Anonymous)
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From: (Anonymous)
no subject