The Lion King: tames the cynic
They’re going to revoke my membership of the Cynics Society of Canada for the following statement but what the hell: I loved The Lion King. There, I said it, it’s out there. Let the chair of the membership committee come after me. Let other CSC members cross the street when they see me coming.
In fact, I love this show so much if I could (i.e. if I were as rich as Warren Buffett) I would buy tickets for every child in this city so that they could have their little socks knocked off by the potential theatre has to create beauty and inspire awe. Forget Iron Man or whatever Pixar wizardry is in the cinemas at the moment – this is the real deal: authentic handmade magic brought to life by human voice and movement. I would defy any digital wizard to match the beauty of the animals coming through the auditorium at the opening (especially the elephant) or the moment when Simba looks into the water and communicates with his dead father; they are stunning and reach deep inside the openhearted and the cynic alike. My response to these moments surprised me: a childlike instinct towards beautiful, transcendent things. If a child saw something like this they would be a convert to theatre for life. And, I too became a convert to this supposed product of marketing men and accountants.
The Lion King might be a Disney product but they gave the keys to this particular kingdom to Julie Taymor (and her puppet and mask co-creator Michael Curry). I remember when the original Broadway production was announced. The hiring by Disney of an avant-garde theatre designer and director who would re-imagine the original cartoon in her own vision was framed as a huge risk, especially after the safe choices made with Beauty and the Beast, their previous Broadway adaptation. With hindsight, it was pure genius. The identity of theatre’s Lion King is directly linked to Taymor’s vision – far more than Tim Rice and Elton John’s music – and unlike Beauty and the Beast which seems to be licensed out to different producers, Disney tightly controls how this one is created (in other words, this is a Disney production). And, for my part, I’m happy that we get to see Taymor’s vision rather than a watered down substitute. Is The Lion King a big marketing machine? Does Disney micro-manage their product? Sure, but The Lion King is also a piece, I believe, with real artistic value.
The heart of Taymor’s Lion King belongs to Rafiki (Brenda Mhlongo in this production). According to ever-reliable Wikipedia, the cartoon Rafiki is male and Taymor requested a sex-change because she felt there is so little female representation in the original. This was inspired and under Taymor’s guidance The Lion King exists within a surprisingly feminized world. Rafiki provides the narrative voice, talking and singing to the audience as if we’re sitting around a fire, listening to an old legend. Mhlongo’s performance is stunning. She has bags of charisma and a voice that fills the theatre with power and chills. I could’ve happily watched her for two hours straight.
On a couple of occasions, Rafiki draws an image of Simba on the side of a tree, the first time it evokes the idea of a legend, of a famous lion club, on the second it signals his absence (and hoped for return). I may be reading too much into it, but it is almost as if Taymor, along with Roger Alles and Irene Mecchi who wrote the book, is slyly exploring the theme of male absence. It is the females who maintain and advocate for order while the males struggle for, misuse or abandon power. In short, The Lion King on stage becomes an exploration of the failure of men to use power wisely. Interestingly, this is not just Scar (the usurping uncle who engineers the death of Simba’s father and takes over the “kingdom”) but also Simba himself who lets his damaged ego and shame stand in the way of his obligations to the community and, by extension his family. I barely remember the movie – but I doubt that there is quite the same balance between the culpability of Scar and Simba as there is here. I found Nicholas Carriere’s (who played Scar on opening night) take on Scar to be oddly sympathetic (at least to middle-aged playwrights with no children).
Taymor doesn’t seem particularly interested in the standard male journey motif and this is perhaps also reflected in the action sequences—especially the fight scenes— which are heavily stylized and conveyed through surprisingly clunky choreography. Taymor is at her best with the stately and graceful and therefore the battles are rarely gripping. Things also lag slightly half way through the first act – around the time that Dad Lion (Mufasa, played by Dionne Randolph) is giving young Simba lessons on how to be, you know, kingly.
As we’ve come to expect in American entertainment, the romantic leads (the teenage Simba and Nala played by Adam Jacobs and Syndee Williams respectively) are slightly bland and not particularly sexy, although very smiley and in good shape. The young Simba and Nala are played by two sets of precious child actors who alternate performances (for some reason I was reminded of children working in the circus – I can imagine kids wide-eyed with envy over travelling the world with this show). Ben Lipitz as Pumbaa, a wharthog, and Nick Cordileone as Timon, a meercat, are fantastic as the comic relief buddies that Simba picks up on his travels. Their arrival reignites the show after a brief lag and it never looks back.
It’s the design elements that The Lion King is famous for and it’s precisely these elements that make me want to take every child to see it. According, again, to Wikipedia a number of elements have been reduced for this touring production (apparently Pride Rock came out of the ground in the original—here it’s scaffolding on rollers— and the rising sun was even larger). Even with the reduced means that touring imposes on the vision, the design is still phenomenal and the central conceit remains, that is of seeing the performers through the masks/costumes so that we’re seeing the show on (at least) two levels at once. Mostly this works really well although I expected a little more fluidity; the costumes often seem to restrain the physicality of the performers and their ability to move. Carriere as Scar has the most fun with the costume, his lion face able to come down with a menacing glare. I guess I expected to see more of this.
I imagine there are those who sneer at The Lion King as another Disney franchise and Taymor as a sort of sell-out (which her doing Spider-Man with U2 would seem to lend evidence to). Sure the design might be breathtaking but there are other, more artistically substantial works that have equally stunning design. I would take issue with this. I think one of the great successes of The Lion King is that Taymor’s vision is grafted onto the most basic of narratives. While it might be a by-the-numbers hero-journey, Joseph Campbell-lite if you will, it is still a robust, compelling story with enough engaging characters and incidents to allow Taymor to focus on the things that she does so well. With so many productions that use spectacle as the starting point the narrative gets often lost either through poor storytelling or attempts at intellectual weight that the creators are not able to hold up. The simple core of The Lion King allows Taymor’s visual intelligence to fly.
Another reason why I would defend The Lion King is because of its appeal to children. This show is a gift to them. I just wish the ticket prices weren’t so high. As for those other cynics, well I suspect they haven’t seen it yet.
Presented by Broadway Across Canada, the Lion King continues at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre until August 8. For more information get your pride on here.