Before The Lion King changed musicals forever, it almost never made it to Broadway. This is the untold origin story of how the Magic Kingdom came to 42nd Street
Then tragedy struck on Easter 1994. Disney president Frank Wells, flying home from a ski trip in a helicopter, crashed in the mountains of Nevada. Disney was thrown into turmoil. Jeffrey Katzenberg assumed he’d take over Wells’s role, but Eisner, instead, shouldered the responsibilities himself. Furious, Katzenberg left the company a few months later to form the film studio and production start-up DreamWorks, with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen.
“Fine,” Eisner said. “We’ll do it.” Disney was taking a risk. Taymor had never worked in the commercial theater. But to play it safe, Disney made Taymor give periodic presentations to Eisner and other executives. If they did not like the direction she was going in, they could sever the relationship. Taymor had a few demands of her own. She liked John and Rice’s songs but insisted that Lebo M. join the team to fill out the score.
She went back to the original script but began to play around with the notion of the “humanimal.” She wanted the audience to see the puppeteers as they manipulated their creatures. But what if she put the puppeteer, still visible,the puppet? A cheetah, for instance, with the front and back parts of the animal attached to the puppeteer who manipulates the paws with rods. Or a life-size Timon puppet attached to the actor at the feet, the actor shadowing the puppet.
Taymor had made some mistakes. The masks for Mufasa and Scar were too big, and they were white because she hadn’t painted them. She knew that when completed and properly lit the audience would have no problem taking in the mask and the actor’s face at the same time. But in a brightly lit rehearsal in the middle of the day, with Disney executives sitting just a few feet away from the performers, her designs were a bust.
At which point Vickery decided to quit. The bulky headdress was giving him headaches. The electronics used to operate it “worked less than 50 percent of the time.” And as the headdress extended out over his head and neck, he said, “I was doing things the human body isn’t supposed to do.” He told Disney: “This is going to injure me.” Disney threw enough money at him that he stayed, but his fear of injury was not unfounded. Taymor’s puppets made extraordinary physical demands on the cast.May 1997.
On the first day of rehearsals, Taymor fell ill. It turned out to be her gallbladder. It was removed, but she was back at the Orpheum the next day. She directed while reclining on a BarcaLounger. The crew dubbed it the “Bark-a-lounger” because she’d “bark” instructions from it over a microphone.
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