Mythri and me are friends for nearly a decade and keeping in tune with technology, our communication has moved from snail mail to e-mail to chat. A couple of days back she sends me this long mail, which is a review of The lion king broadway musical. For a staunch fan like me of Lion King, i felt like jumping out of office and watch this musical, but i wonder if i would ever get the opportunity, eitherways here is the review for u to read and relive the sensation of Simba. Thanks Mythri for the wonderful description. :)

"Last sunday, we were at the lion king musical. i can't praise it enough. my mind is still in a whirl. it was exactly the same story as the movie. but had more songs and dialogues. for eg, the monkey wizard is a well nourished african woman who sings long lovely songs in some african dialect all the time. and she makes fun of things, she walks in front of the stage, sees the curtain and says "hmm..looks like a kmart shower curtain". she mooned(ok, she had her costume on but the costume had a large red patch like the backside of a monkey) simba when he refused to go back to the pride. imagine a 50+ inch backside mooning. She did it with so much panache, the audience roared. It was 2.66 hrs long. it is an amazing adaptation. There is a mixture of true-to-animal-world as well as pretend-animal-people. i.e. people actually having animal costumes and prancing on 4 limbs and people with masks walking around like humans. the hyenas were played EXACTLY like the cartoon ones, 3 young men who had extensions on their arms and jumped around on them rather feeble-brainedly. the lions were real people with masks who danced human jazz like dances. young simba and young nala were little kids who somersaulted. zazu was a clown in a blower hat with a hand puppet that looks like the bird. he moved that puppet around so realistically(i mean, so true to the cartoon) and managed to somersault while doing it. There were 320 animal props--toys, etc. the stage
set up was amazing, lots of remote controlled toys gliding across the stage to show things. and a huge (60 ft diameter) round orange silk cloth that they slowly unfolded on the stage to show the sun. and this lovely set of steps that curved around itself to make pride rock. if you get a chance to see it, DONT MISS IT EVER. its the best musical i have seen and i have seen quite a few.

The acting was amazing, the voice production and the singing simply superb. the costumes were nice. not too garish, not too simple. the sets was GREAT. imagine
translating the wildbeest stampede. and making it look like the beast are heading towards you. There were people flying in the air dancing like sprites for the "can you feel the love tonight" song. Check out the Disney Site for some pix and descriptions better than mine."