It can feel like a big-budget stage show that you can see at Disneyland - which is not a bad thing at all. And even though you don’t mind all the new additions to the story, there are also moments when you’re just sitting in your seat waiting for your favorite song to come on or your favorite line to be uttered. For instance, although it makes sense for a live stage musical, replacing the lovable animal characters from the movie with forgettable human characters, some of the magic and excitement is lost from the story. Although they are separate mediums, the fact that the story is close to identical to the film version can, at times be a distraction. movie situation considering the two are like fraternal twins. Scott makes the role his own, making the audience yearn for him to come back on stage when he’s not there.Ī musical like Aladdin is difficult to not make a musical vs. The staging and robust production number of Friend Like Me not only gives Scott a grand introduction as the Genie but injects a jolt of energy into the musical, giving it an electrifying personality and flash that Robin Williams brought in the screen version. They light up the stage with their crystalline voices, but it is definitely Scott as the Genie that steals the show. As the two main characters, Jacobs and McCalla are fully realized in-the-flesh versions of the iconic Disney characters, pumping joy and delight into their roles. The Academy Award-winning song is the centerpiece of the production as the stage is transformed into a night sky gorgeously lit by the moon and stars with Aladdin and Jasmine flying on a “how did they do that?” magic carpet up down and all around the stage. Because let’s face it, everyone is there to hear A Whole New World. More original songs like Proud to Be Your Boy and A Million Miles Away occupy real estate in the musical to fulfill the Broadway runtime and although they are great additions to an already strong soundtrack, you won’t necessarily be singing them when you leave the theater. There are memorable tunes in the jazzy soundtrack that make a return to the musical including One Jump Ahead, Friend Like Me and Prince Ali. He uses this opportunity to win the heart of Jasmine, take down Jafar, and in true Disney fashion, learn a moral that teaches him that if he can be himself, his life would be much easier. Upon rubbing the lamp he unleashes the all-powerful Genie (played by original Broadway cast member Michael James Scott), who grants him three wishes. Things shift when the Sultan’s evil Grand Vizier Jafar (Jonathan Weir) uses Aladdin to get a magical lamp, it backfires and Aladdin ends up with the treasured item. The new "Aladdin" crew is committed and fun, which you would expect, but they also bring more emotional depth to a show naturally inclined to remain in the shallow end of the pool, which you would not.The two meet on the street, but Aladdin realizes that the two can’t become an item because she’s a princess and he’s just a street rat. You can't beat catching a first-class tour right at the start, before the weariness of the road has set in, but with a second company cast after the creative team really knows what it needs for this thing to work, which is rarely the case before a show opens on Broadway. Violence can be cartoonish - and there are even more good reasons for that here - without losing all its relationship to causality and veracity.Ī good deal of that smugness has been corrected in this new company a lot was achieved by adding a little more subtlety to the human aspects of the staging and by actually encouraging the actors to commit to the logic of every moment. (There are, in fairness, a variety of good reasons for that.) But it was the frenetic flips in Chad Beguelin's gag-filled book, and in director Casey Nicholaw's production, that bothered me the most - the way, say, one of Aladdin's sidekicks, or one of the show's many semi-anonymous bad guys, would be ready to smack someone in the head and then, just a demi-second later, be giving them a big fat kiss. Now, that might sound like a ridiculous parameter to put on such a story - which employs the most diverse cast Disney ever has used on stage but still has to take place in an Arab world so timelessly retro and culturally non-specific as to be nowhere recognizable.
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