Lion King Roars Back to Sheas Performing Arts Center – Review
The Lion King returned to Buffalo, NY for a four-week run and playing at Sheas Performing Arts Center through October 30, 2011
The Lion King goes that all one better. Like a gift from some ancient storyteller, we listen and watch and wonder in unison as the spectacle unfolds. It is as if we are sitting around a great campfire, we are mesmerized by the motion and shadows. The production, originally, designed and directed by the great Julie Taymore, reaches deep within our psyche and touches our most primal instincts.
From the time the first cleverly designed animals creep or stalk on stage … or down the aisle … there’s a lot to take in from “The Lion King” musical. That set the tone for the evening during a recent performance of “The Lion King,” which is running at Shea’s Performing Arts Center in Buffalo through October 30, 2011.
Even without the music and story, the stylized costumes are amazing. The first time you see the cheetah stalk onto the stage, its feline body echoed by the human one controlling it, there’s a moment of double-take. Same with the actors serving as bases for leaping antelopes, or soaring birds.
Eventually, you find yourself increasingly able to simply look over the human heads above or below the animal ones … or finding that the doubled imagery actually lends an interesting depth to the performance.
Early in the proceedings, Rafiki the mandrill (baboon) – magician conjures an image of the lion cub, Simba, which is projected from within the depths of the massive trunk of the Tree of Life. It is a simple, elegant line drawing. It struck a memory for me. Acclaimed German director Werner Herzog recently released a documentary film, The Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which tells the story of the world’s oldest cave drawings, recently discovered in France. Explorers found hundreds of prehistoric paintings and engravings on the walls of the Chauvet Cave. Carbon dating shows that the depictions of rhinoceroses, lions, cave bears, horses, bison, and mammoths are 32,000 years old.
Read the complete review {Via Buffalo Rising}
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