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| Image: Dramamusicals.com |
Sarah's birthday present was tickets for the family to go and see The Lion King at Birmingham Hippodrome. On taking our seats, we found we were in row F, quite near the front and looking around we could see that a couple of the boxes were filled with percussion.
As the lights dimmed, Rafiki came on stage and the familiar strains of Circle of Life started with the African chants alternating between the stage and performers who had taken up position in two of the other boxes. All of a sudden, the curtain was raised, the sun rose and the animals started to appear on stage. Then, a moment of confusion as the house lights were raised again. I looked around to see what was happening, as did other members of the audience. What we found was that elephants were coming down one aisle with rhinos and birds coming down the other and succesfully navigated the stairs to join the rest of the animal kingdom on stage. Pride Rock entered slowly and subtely from stage right and curled to form a familiar setting, which Mufasa, Sarabi and Rafiki climbed to present the baby Simba to the rest of the animals. By the time the song was over, I already had a tear in my eye!
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| Image: Londontheatrebookings.com |
The staging of the show is brilliant and effectively brings to life some of the trickier parts of the 1994 Disney film, in particular the wildebeest stampede, the death of Mufasa and Simba's 'chat' with the ghost of Mufasa. At one point, it also felt like Scar was pointing his cane straight at me whilst telling the hyena's to be prepared!
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| Zazu - Image: http://campmartintravels.blogspot.com |
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| Pumbaa and Timon - Image: janephob.blogspot.com |
The storyline is not solely limited to the film, scenes have been added as have new musical numbers, which complement the existing story without you feeling that it has been padded out for theatrical effect. The costume design really added to the performance as well, especially when the hyenas were in silhouette!
Although when you go to see a professional musical you expect it to be slick, however I couldn't help but think that it was flawless and to my mind the cast and crew were well deserving of the standing ovation they received. In fact, as Craig Revel-Horwood might say: "A-MA-ZING"
Additional show review from The Express And Star
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| Sarah enjoying an interval drink. |
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| A selfie, with S showing off where his tooth fell out in Act 2. |
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