Theatre review: The Lion King, Edinburgh

FIRST, let’s get one thing clear: no word written by any theatre critic will ever make the slightest dent on the great commercial juggernaut that is the stage version of The Lion King.
The Lion King: A distinctly mixed bag. Picture: ContributedThe Lion King: A distinctly mixed bag. Picture: Contributed
The Lion King: A distinctly mixed bag. Picture: Contributed

The Lion King - Playhouse, Edinburgh

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Just as rock stars now use stadium shows to cash in on their catalogue of recorded sound, so Disney uses shows like The Lion King – now at the Playhouse for a three-month Christmas season – to cash in on the quality of their film output; the only question is how well the material survives the transfer to a different medium.

And the truth about The Lion King is that the show is a distinctly mixed bag, combining flashes of supreme inspiration with elements which are unsubtle at best. The negatives include a truly atrocious script, which makes about as leaden a job as possible of this classic rite-of-passage story about the lion cub Simba’s journey to manhood. And most of the music is completely forgettable, despite some nicely-textured marimba sounds here and there in the orchestration.

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The show’s huge achievement, though, lies in the glorious, subtle and beautiful series of animal puppets created by designer Julie Taymor, with Michael Curry – puppets which absorb the human body into a whole Serengeti of stylised animal shapes, which somehow capture the essence of lion and hyena, leopard and giraffe, while also nodding subtly to the human faces of Africa. Moving across a stage drenched in the brilliant savanna colours of Richard Hudson’s set, these wonderful figures win well-deserved roars of applause from the audience; and the show’s 40-strong cast work with faultless commitment and energy, to deliver an experience audiences can rate as a memorable night out, worth all of the £50-plus that it costs.