Not even Jersey Boys could take precedence over the spectacular pageant of The Lion King, a musical so imaginative and innovative that there may never be another even vaguely like it. Imagine a stage full of dancers and singers dressed as elephants and giraffes, zebras and antelopes, singing in English and Swahili while long green branches descend from the heavens and birds revolve just over the audience’s head. Imagine life-sized hyenas, operated by humans wearing puppets, taking orders from a scoundrelly lion, or a meerkat and a life-sized warthog teaching a lost lion cub how to eat insects and live by the creed of No Worries: “Hakuna Matata.” The Lion King was about more than its characters and story; it was about the potential of live theater to amaze and delight, about the far limits of human invention and the pure joys of color and form. If you missed it during its current reprise, demand another. And if you’ve got children, makes sure they witness — somehow, somewhere — a show that is guaranteed to hook them on theater forever.
This article appears in Sep 10-16, 2008.
