After all these years, I finally saw the stage production of the Lion King.
I’ve heard that the costumes, sets and stage production over all are fantastic and amazing. I recall an episode of one of my favorite sit coms of all time, Aaron Sorkin’s first foray into TV: Sports Night. If you’ve never seen it, get it. It’s great. Anyway, in this ep, the character of Dana, played by Felicity Huffman, agrees to take her boss’s niece to the show even though Dana hates theater. She apparently saw a bad production in her youth and came to the conclusion that live theater was all about Hoe-downs.
That must have been one bad production of Oklahoma.
But Dana returns from a matinee of The Lion King transformed. “I didn’t know we could do that!” she says repeatedly.
The imagination and creativity of the human species is indeed on display in The Lion King.
I knew we could do that and I was still blown away.
Our group was split into three parts. Molly, Meg and Hattie were across the balcony from Josie, Megan and myself. Katie P, MJ, Nanners and Bean were two rows behind Molly and Hattie.
MJ and her girls had arrived at the theater a half hour before curtain. All excited, she called Katie and said “We’re in the lobby! Are you almost here?”
“Almost where?” Katie asked. She’d forgotten all about the show.
This was only problematic because she had their tickets.
So she grabbed the tix, hopped in the car and made for downtown.
Megan, Josie and I waited for a bit in the lobby with MJ and the girls but we had our tickets and the ushers were encouraging everyone to take their seats. We promised MJ that we’d dally on the stairs so the ushers wouldn’t close the doors.
Traffic was light on that Sunday afternoon and Katie made good time.
Inside the theater, most of the audience had been seated. MJ had no choice but to explain to the ushers why she and her girls stood lost and alone in the lobby.
At one point, an usher hissed into his walky talky “You can’t close the doors: there are children out here!”
You gotta love theater people.
At one minute to 1:00 (Curtain time), Katie P came charging through the front doors, her little legs churning, her feet clomping in the gardening boots she still wore, tickets held high above her head as the theater personnel and merchandise sellers cheered her on. Without a moment to lose, they scanned the tickets and flew up the three flights of stairs to the upper balcony, collapsing into their seats as the doors closed, the lights went down and the curtain began to rise…only thirty seconds late.
Everyone knows the plot of the Lion King: we’ve all seen the movie.
Knowing the movie does nothing to prepare you for the spectacle of the live show. The costumes are mind blowing. The music is gorgeous. The singers were universally magnificent and the sets and staging were simply too fantastic to describe.
Even if you think you hate theater, if you ever get a chance to see the Lion King, go: have your mind blown. You won’t regret it.
Not even if your car gets impounded because you abandoned it in front of the theater with the engine running.
It’s worth it.