“The Lion King” runs April 10-27 at the Fox Theatre.
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TEN TIMES A DAY, all over the world, the cry in the African language of Zulu rings out in a darkened theater:
Nants ingonyama bagithi baba! Sithi uhhmm ingonyama! (“Here comes a lion, Father. Oh yes, it’s a lion.”)
And the great menagerie comes forth, lions and zebras and birds fluttering overhead, hyenas and a massive lumbering elephant pouring down the aisles. “Seen purely as a visual tapestry, there is simply nothing else like it,” The New York Times wrote when The Lion King opened in 1997, praising “the transporting magic wrought by the opening 10 minutes” of the show.
Even though he’s been touring with The Lion King for more than four years, production stage manager Kenneth J. Davis will not miss that opening 10 minutes, “The Circle of Life.”
“Every night, all of us who work backstage make it a point to go out and watch that number,” he says. “Every night. We just stand in the back of the house. It’s partially out of deference and respect to the genius that is happening, courtesy of Julie Taymor and the creative people. Also just to be a part of that moment in the audience. You expect the kids to react, but when you hear the oohs and aahs of the adults, then we know we’ve done our job.”
THAT JOB IS WHY they’re at the Fox Theatre this month for a three-week sit-down. It’s the third time a Lion King national tour has played Atlanta, but the first time it has moved into the Fox. The 85-year-old landmark theater has had to make temporary modifications in its auditorium to accommodate the logistically complex musical.
Davis has brought several Broadway shows to the Fox, but for many in the 130-member company, this is their first time in the space.
“I can’t wait for the cast to come onstage for the first time,” Davis said a few weeks before the show’s arrival, “not having seen the grandeur that is the auditorium: the gold and the jewels and the gilding. And also a little unnerving for them to see the 4,000-plus seats. It’s like playing an arena with a rock show. “
Although the show has been on the road since 2002, it’s one of the most complicated ever to take on a national tour. The North American company travels in 18 trucks; 14 are tractor-trailers that haul duplicates of everything: sets, lighting, puppets, etc.
That means that when this Lion King played its final week in Seattle, a duplicate set was being loaded into Atlanta’s Fox. “We need a week of preparation and setup in each city before we open,” Davis says.
THE SUN RARELY SETS on The Lion King. This production at the Fox is one of 10 Lion Kings running or on tour worldwide, from New York to Tokyo. In 2012, the show passed The Phantom of the Opera as the highest-grossing show in Broadway history. It regularly fills its Broadway home, the Minskoff, to almost 99 percent capacity, even in the 17th year of its run.
Part of The Lion King’s mission, says Davis, is to bring Africa to the world. Including the Zulu opening, the show uses six African languages, the others being Swahili, Xhosa, Sotho, Tswana and Congolese. And all Lion King companies include native South African performers; this one has six.
So it seems appropriate that in 2007, Johannesburg, South Africa, joined the list of cities where The Lion King has been staged, the first time it played Africa. Simba and company had finally returned to the continent that birthed them. They had come full circle.
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Phil Kloer has written about the arts in Atlanta for 29 years, for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the website ArtsATL.com and Encore Atlanta.
