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.