Lion King Leaps onto French Stage

Lion King Leaps onto French Stage

By Emma Jane Kirby
BBC News
10/8/2007

It's perhaps a surprising choice for a country which has almost no history of musical theatre and which tends to look down a little on sing-along shows. But The Lion King, the blockbusting Disney stage musical, opened at the Mogador theatre in Paris this week as Le Roi Lion.

The last musical to be tried out in Paris's Mogador theatre was Les Miserables - but despite being home-grown, it failed to take root with the French public and ran for just eight months.

Le Roi Lion, however, has been greeted by standing ovations on each of its six preview nights, and Stephane Laporte, who adapted the stage show and translated the lyrics into French, was confident before the curtain went up in Paris on Thursday that this American coming of age musical would have its French audiences hooked.

"I think the French are getting accustomed to the idea that it's possible to have theatre that sings," he told the BBC.

"It's something we used to do in the Twenties and lost track of. So I hope its going to be the start of something new.

"We've adapted the show a bit for the French audience - where there's a Charleston dance for example, we've put in a cancan. The French audience appreciate seeing a bit of their own culture in the show!"

Just back from a stop there. Of course, it's not just French people at the park.

We ate at the fast food place in their version of Tomorrowland and the Lion King stage is actually part of the restaurant. There's a huge curtain (presumably theatre seating and the stage behind it) and in the rear areas are all the tables for the hamburger/pomme frites eatin' folks.

Actually, the Lion King show in the park is a different show. The subject of this thread is the adaptation of the Lion King broadway musical in Paris.

I think the article is slightly misinformed, as there have been quite a lot of new musicals in the last 10 years in France :

Starmania, Les Miserables, Cabaret, Les 10 commandements, Romeo & Juliet, Notre Dame de Paris... to name just a few. Some of them were very successful, and some failed miserably.

They are not as big here as they are in the USA, but I don't think they would make three new shows every year if they did not make any money.

Anyway, I already have my tickets, and will discover this show in december !

The show at the theme park is quite different- a bit of greatest hits from the film and more of a musical synopsis but uses some interesting elements like animatronics and a costumed Timon like the meet and greet character though with an articulated head that allows the character to speak and blink (in turn it's different from the Festival of the Lion King show at Animal Kingdom also).

There's also been a pretty big amount of promotion for Le Roi Lion in Paris. I can remember visiting Paris in January and there were quite a number of advertisements for the show along the Champs-Elysee back then (I'm surprised it's taken this long for the show to open actually).

The Lion King has been adapted to perform in many countries successfully and I've definitely lost count of exactly how many international productions have been staged, but it's proven to be well received in all markets it's performed in but considering that it draws parallels to Shakespeare's Hamlet that shouldn't be too much of a surprise considering how that's a strong, universal story familiar to many audiences.

Oops.

I saw the advertisements for the show and then saw a sign for it in the park and thought it was all the same show.

Guess I picked a bad week to stop being fluent in French.