The Lion King and Les Mis

Almost two weeks ago I went to go see two musicals in West End. I had two friends from university stop by London for a few days after teaching and doing various work in Nairobi for eight months. We had planned on seeing Les Miserables (a first for two of us) and purchased our tickets early. I was so excited to see this! Early the evening before going, they were walking around Central London and called me to ask if I wanted to see The Lion King since they found good tickets. I was ecstatic, especially when I heard how cheap they were! I quickly caught a train to meet up with them in Leicester Square and walk to Lyceum Theatre.



The Lion King was amazing! Since all the characters are animals, the performance demanded a higher level of creativity and they blew us away with the detail, precision, and artistry. The opening scene of the “Circle of Life” was overwhelming. People were using stilts, huge masks, and utilized banraku and shadow puppetry to create a full kingdom of animals. Giraffes, elephants, cheetah, monkeys, and more were walking, running, leaping, flying around. In comparison to that, I was at the scarcity of animals in “I Just Can’t Wait to be King”. Everyone on stage had training in ballet, which enhanced the dancing, choreography, and acting. The prancing gazelles, the wild river in the jungle, the grass waving in the wind, and thundering stampede I thought were exceptionally creative. Due to the superb makeup and the fluidity of movement, I found myself looking at the puppets or masks as if they indeed were the actors! My favourite character was Jafar, George Asprey did a wonderful job portraying his demeanour, displaying the mannerisms and delivering the lines. The set and stage were very well done to characterize the African Safari and jungle with Timon and Pumba. In many ways it was an excellent performance and we loved it. The singing was not as strong as I had hoped, and Simba’s voice didn’t seem to fit his character but the main area that stuck out to us as lacking was dramatic space. The dialogue was rushed at times, the line queues too clear, the timing too regimented…creating less flexibility and space for dramatic flair, for a comfortable settling of character. At least that is how it seemed. It has been fifteen years since I saw The Lion King as a Disney movie so the story was somewhat fresh. Seeing it as a musical was a much richer experience and I was glad to have some friends to enjoy it with.




The next night we went to see Les Mis, the other end of the spectrum in musical theatre. Whereas the Lion King demanded incredible creativity and dancing and lacked dramatic space, Les Mis would be complete rubbish without dramatic space and did not call for really unique costuming or set design and very little dancing. It is not fair to compare the two musicals. When one is based on a novel by Victor Hugo set in the context of the early 19th c. France it is obviously very different than a Disney movie set in Africa. I knew most of the Les Mis soundtrack and had attempted to read the novel at age 13 ( I gave up after two chapters were spent on Cosette and Maruis’ romance through mere observation of each other)… the musical was a great way to pull it all together for me. It is the longest running musical in the Broadway history. The singing blew me away. There are so many strong roles and rich characters. David Shannon did an excellent job as Jean Valjean. My favourite song of his was “who am I?” and I must admit a tingling excitement at hearing “Do You Hear the People Sing?” The rebel leader had tremendous flair and was comfortable in his role. Since I read the novel, the scenes had added depth, especially Valjean’s reaction to the priest’s mercy and Javert’s suicide. There are so many good songs, each loaded with major themes that resound in different voices! We enjoyed recalling our favourite ones. One of my friends was observant enough to note that our young Cosette was missing during our final applause…must have been past her bedtime by then:)
Les Mis has been performed all around the world and been translated into 21 languages- why? Hugo was content to have several stories interwoven into a historic tapestry-20 years after Napoleon’s defeat and the Paris Uprising in 1832. He did not try to tackle the social injustice and war with all its issues; he sought to tell individual stories that intersected each other within all of that in a way that was not limited to that context. Alain Boublil and his long time partner Claude-Michel Schönberg transformed Les Misérables into a musical theatre work in Paris in 1980 based on the lyrics of Herbert Kretzmer, selling as a concept album. Two years later, British producer Cameron Mackintosh and directors John Caird and Trevor Nunn did an excellent job analyzing the history, characters and themes to bring it to life on stage. I really do not know much about Les Mis so much of this could be off but it was an amazing musical and I definitely would love to see it again!
I love musicals for several reasons yet at the centre is its full expression of life with all its joys and sorrow, triumphs and tragedies through a feast for the senses-singing, dancing, acting, instruments, artistry and an overall creative production. Seeing two musicals in two nights was definitely a full enough experience to make me content for at least month before visiting the West End again.