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I scored a free ticket to The Lion King yesterday, and it was quite a show. I’ve been in the city nearly 7 months already and this is the first Broadway show I’ve been to so far. My editor had an extra ticket that she wasn’t going to use, so she gave it to me. I immediately jumped at the oppertunity to see the show. I admire Disney’s expansion into musical theater. It was a gutsy move that paid off.
I’ve heard reviews about the show before, but I really didn’t know what to expect. The seat I got couldn’t have been more ideal. It was right in the orchestra section, not too close to the stage. The story is just like the Lion King movie, so there were no surprises there. The biggest treat was the choreography and the costumes. For the opening scene, where all the animals gather to pay tribute to Simba, people in ornate animal costumes file down towards the stage throught the audience, each one contains some esence of both the person in the costume, and the animal that particular costume represents.
People audibly gasped when they saw the giraffes, which were actually people on stilts. At first I thought the animal elements of some of the costumes had to be pneumatic (both Mufasa and Scar had lion masks that could be raised and lowered in front of their faces), but then I realized it was all manipulated by cables connected to different limbs that could be manipulated by subtle arm movements.
The dancing was really cool. It was all africanesque, with some cheesy hip-hop and rock n’ roll stuff thrown in, and made for an absolutely amazingly artstic spectacle. It’s no wonder people are willing to fork out a hundred bucks or more to see the show.