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!"