It's Theater Thursday!
Today seems like a good day to talk about Disney's Aladdin.
But that's a movie, why would I talk about that? Well, because it seems that it
may very well be going to Broadway. If Aladdin heads to Broadway it will join
the ranks of its older Disney-movies-turned-into-Broadway-stage-musicals
siblings: Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, My Son Pinocchio, and more.
Most recently Disney has seen fabulous success with Newsies on Broadway,
bringing in many new fans with the ecstatic revamped music, and perhaps
creating a bit of tension between the diehard movie nuts and the newer musical-heads.
Newsies, like Aladdin, originally came out in 1992 and both shows, assuming
Aladdin does make the move to the Great White Way, will have experienced a huge
resurgence in popularity.
This production of Aladdin, with its lofty (though certain
if desired, considering Disney is bankrolling it) expectations, was in tryouts at the 5th Avenue Theater in
Seattle in July of last year. With a book by Chad Beguelin, most famous for his
work on The Wedding Singer, direction by Casey Nicholaw of The Book of Mormon,
music by Alan Menken (who managed to have two of his shows go against each
other for best musical, but not best score in this year's Tony Awards), and
lyrics by Howard Ashman, Tim Rice, and Beguelin the show is certain to make a
big splash. Then again, the Seattle Times does point out that the show was
flawed, with an Act I that tries too hard to be the movie we all know and love.
However, it also says that the second act was good and that it was still
enjoyable to watch.
The Seattle Aladdin uses many of the cut songs from the
movie as well as new songs composed by Menken and lyricized by Beguelin. Menken
and Beguelin decided to go back to Menken and Ashford's original concept of a
fast paced show modeled after the seven "Road to..." movies starring
Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour. This series is known for its zany
antics and gags, where the jokes, bits, one-liners take precedence over the
plot. This style likely lends itself to reinstating such songs as "Call Me
a Princess" during which Jasmine becomes a shrill voiced rich girl to shoo
away suitors, "Why Me?" in which Jafar comically laments his past as
he searches for the Diamond in the Rough, and "Babkak, Omar, Aladdin,
Kasim" in which Aladdin and his four friends (conflated into Abu in the
movie version) perform to earn some spare change. What purpose these songs
serve in the show is hard to tell out of context, but I'm all for more singing
Jafar.
This is not the first time that Disney has made a stage
musical version of Aladdin. There's the forty-five minute California Adventure
show Disney's Aladdin: A Musical Spectacular. First opened in 2003, it more or
less condenses the whole movie into that tiny time frame because who wants to
go to an amusement park and watch a two hour and ten minute show (well, I
would, but that's unimportant)? There are also Aladdin Jr. and Aladdin Kids,
the middle
school and lower school versions of Aladdin respectively. As to why there needs
to be one especially geared to middle schoolers AND lower schoolers, I don't
really know. But with such wonderful casting directions as "Jafar is our villain. In order to portray this
through casting, consider a taller boy with a changed voice," and "The
Tiger God is an all powerful presence yet a tad bit sassy to keep it interesting,"
one can't help but wonder what on Earth they're trying to do with these shows.
Regardless, Disney's latest foray into turning a
tried and true property into a huge Broadway smash could prove successful. If
the rumors are true, anyway. Perhaps we'll see a reworked version of the
Seattle show in the near future. Will it become the next Lion King, and be
everyone's favorite Broadway show, with people remembering spectacular
sequences years down the line from when they first saw it? Or will it be
Tarzan, and no one will even know it existed because it was, apparently, that
bad? Who knows. All I want to know is where are my Hunchback and Mulan Broadway
shows? I want Hellfire and Make a Man Out of You live. Let's get down to
business, Disney.
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