The Lion King

I mentioned in my last post that we went to see The Lion King on Friday.

This is one of the few musicals I’ve never been to before so I really looking forward to it, especially as quite a few of my friends had recommended it.

I must admit I was intrigued as to how the animals would be portrayed as was my youngest who asked me how it would be done.

He recounted an amateur production of The Wizard of Oz where they used a real dog as Toto, and the dog did something he shouldn’t on the stage, much to the audience’s amusement, but not the cast I am sure. Anyway I said that I didn’t think they would be using real lions on the stage, that might just be a bit too unpredictable.

At first he thought he was going to be disappointed when he found out that the animals would actually be people dressed in costumes, but when they first appeared on stage he was so amazed that his eyes nearly popped out of his head.

The set design and the costumes were incredible and all credit needs to go to the wardrobe people who must have been working feverishly behind the scenes.  The giraffes were particularly amazing as the actors were on stilts, both on hands and feet so that they were bent over and the neck and head sat on top of their own heads.  It’s difficult to describe but it looked amazing and how they walked with such grace, I’ll never know. I think that giraffes are one of the most graceful animals and the actors mimicked that grace so well.  There was also a massive elephant and a baby elephant too which danced around with much delight.

The storyline was incredibly close to the film version (which we watched on Sunday) and all in all it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening – despite dosing the boys up with cough medicine in the interval.  I must admit though that for me the costumes and the set design were the real winners.