ALADDIN
Prince Edward Theatre, London W1
Opened 9 June, 2016
***

To an extent they were always going to be damned if they did and also if they didn’t: if they left in the easy Orientalisms of the 1992 movie, or if they took the only other viable option and turned it into a more white-bread affair. But if anyone has experience at melting down such matters into a caffe-latte compromise, it’s Disney. So, welcome to the magical city of Agrabah, where everyone speaks in a mid-Atlantic accent even if they’re played by actors from Solihull or Middlesbrough... everyone except the villainous Jafar, who is of course audibly English. Welcome to Agrabah, where everyone has their own trio of backing vocalists: the sidekicks of Aladdin (Dean John-Wilson) had been planned for the movie version before being excised in favour of a monkey, but Princess Jasmine (Jade Ewen)’s Jasminettes are entirely gratuitous.

This expansion is one symptom of the philosophy behind the adaptation. You can’t reproduce a film onstage, much less an animated film where the only limit is the makers’ imagination... so when writer Chad Beguelin, director Casey Nicholaw (who helmed the show’s 2014 Broadway première) and designer Bob Crowley can’t give as much, they give oodles more elsewhere. A slightly underwhelming magic carpet ride (for the Oscar-winning number “A Whole New World”), but a sumptuous Cave of Wonders, several quick-change whizz-bangs, and of course big production numbers for Trevor Dion Nicholas’ Genie. Robin Williams left a big pair of curly-toed slippers to fill – hell, he left a whole rack of them – but Nicholas does well, turning the Genie into a hyperactive musical-theatre maniac who morphs in a blink between turban-and-robes and Cab Calloway-style zoot suit.

You get a lot of show for your money. (Of course, it being a West End musical, you pay a lot of money for your show.) But that seems to be the guiding principle behind the enterprise: lots to ooh and ahh over, lots to whoop at (dear God, lots to whoop at), and just generally lots. The first half alone of this stage version is almost as long as the entire film. It’s not so much “Never mind the quality, feel the width” as “the width is the quality”. It’s a show that’s sold by the yard.

Written for the Financial Times.

Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights reserved.

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