The Lion King: Your childhood revived

review by Katelynn Banville

March 9^th, 2017

The Lion King performed at the Providence Performing Arts Center was a new glimpse into a childhood classic. The beautiful costumes, familiar songs and words bring back memories of the original film. The detail in each set piece and costume is beyond mesmerizing and keeps you interested and amazed throughout the whole play.

           

The opening scene sets the expectation bar high for the whole entire play. Between the representation of a sunrise to the great use of the theater space, this scene captures your attention. They did a great job with gradually building the scene up to an intense level. You first notice the sunrise on the stage, then the antelope actors on the balcony, an assortment of animals then walk down the isles toward the stage, growing the collection of animals. Once everyone is together on the stage you see the main characters and then you notice that the first scene of the movie is being re-enacted. It was very joyous to see these great costumes for the first time.

            The variety of set pieces and props to represent where they were being greatly optimized to the advantage of the play. You could instantly tell where they were based on the set. The jungle had greenish toned lighting with multiple layers of green leaf shapes representing the trees in the jungle. Sometimes actors would swing in on jungle ropes as well. Mufasa’s cave was represented by a left triangular screen that dropped down allowing you to see further back into the stage on the right but blocking most of the left side. The black and red on the screen really gave an intense feel to what was going on in the show. They also had a pride rock which would move out onto the stage seamlessly each time. It would turn on the stage in very seamless movements which wasn’t distracting to what was going on.

            This play was incredibly well done and its immense detail to the scenes and costumes greatly benefitted the plays outcome. Although it had great detail, it did not distract from the incredible singing and acting from its cast.