Movie Musings: Disney and More

Disney on Broadway Part 1!

On February 8th 1993, Ron Logan, a former executive vice president of Walt Disney Entertainment, founded the Walt Disney Theatrical Group (now better known as Disney Theatrical Group). In the 26 years since its founding, the group has produced a total of 12 shows on Broadway and numerous national tours, along with some non-Broadway original shows. I thought we could explore interesting facts about what the Great White Way’s adaptations of classic Disney stories. Please feel free to comment on anything you find interesting. 

• The very first Disney film adapted for Broadway was Beauty and the Beast. The show premiered at the Palace Theatre on April 18th, 1994. It played a total of 5,461 performances, from 1994-2007, and won a Tony Award for Best Costume Design. Terrence Mann, Susan Egan, and Gary Beach, who originated the respective roles of the Beast, Belle, and Lumiere, all received Tony Nominations for their performances in the show. (Egan, would later be hired by the Walt Disney Studios again to provide the voice of Megara or “Meg” in Hercules (1997)). 
• Two months after “Beauty and the Beast” premiered on Broadway, Disney released their original film adaptation of The Lion King on June 24th. “Lion King,” would get its Broadway treatment three years later on November 13th, 1997 at the New Amsterdam Theatre and is currently playing today at the Minskoff Theatre. The original company won six Tony Awards, including Best Musical. It also starred Samuel E. Wright in the role of Mufasa, and he received a Tony Nomination for his performance. Ironically, Wright had previously voiced Sebastian in The Little Mermaid (1989) nearly a decade earlier.
• The same year that “Lion King,” premiered on Broadway, Sir Tim Rice, who collaborated with Alan Menken on the film version of Aladdin (1992) as well as the Broadway version of “Beauty and the Beast,” collaborated with Alan Menken on King David, which is a concert—not a fully staged musical—based on the Bible Story of David. The show opened at the New Amsterdam Theatre and played for a total of only nine performances. The cast featured Roger Bart as David’s friend Jonathan, and Judy Kuhn as Michal, David’s first wife. Bart is known at Disney for having been the singing voice of Hercules in Hercules (1997) and Kuhn is known at Disney for being the singing voice of Pocahontas in Pocahontas (1995). 
• The first Disney Theatrical Group show to open outside the U.S. was The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It opened at the Musical Theater Berlin in Berlin, Germany, on June 5th, 1999 and closed in June 2002. A readapted version played at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, California and ran from October 28th-December 7, 2014. Directed by Scott Schwartz, son of Stephen Schwartz, in collaboration with Alan Menken and was later transferred to the Paper Mill Playhouse where it ran from March 4th to April 5th, 2015. In 2017, the Berlin version reopened, transferring to Stuttgart in 2018.
• After Sir Elton John and Sir Tim Rice won well-deserved Oscars and Tonys for the Film and Broadway adaptations of “Lion King,” Disney was eager to rehire the pair for another project and they originally considered producing the opera of Aida as an animated movie-musical. It was Sir John, however, who convinced them to produce it directly as a stage musical, and Rice agreed. “Aida” premiered at the Palace Theatre on March 23rd, 2000 and played a total of 1,852 performances. It won four Tonys including Best Original Musical Score for John and Best Actress in a Musical for Heather Hedley who portrayed the title role in the show, and who had previously originated the role of Nala in “Lion King,” on Broadway.  
• Disney’s Tarzan opened at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on May 10th, 2006. Although the show managed to run over a year, it was critically a flop, failed to sell enough tickets, and only played 486 performances. Despite these failures on Broadway, the show later moved to the Netherlands where it ran for two years, and then Sweden where it played for one year, and then Germany where it played for ten years from 2008-2018. The show was also revived for the Tuachan Center for the Arts in Ivins, Utah where it ran from June-October 2010 and The Muny in St. Louis, Missouri where it ran from June-July 2014.
• In 2004, Disney Theatrical produced On the Record, a musical revue which featured an extraordinary range of music from Disney films, Disney shows on Broadway, and even Disneyland Attractions. The show toured for nine months, premiering in Cleveland, Ohio in 2004 and closing in Denver, Colorado in mid-2005. This wasn’t based on any specific plot, but it did feature two male leads and two female leads, one of whom was Ashley Brown. Brown would later become one of many actresses to succeed Susan Egan in the role of Belle in “Beauty and the Beast,” and after that she originated the title role in Disney’s next theatrical adaptation, Mary Poppins.

This brings us to the intermission of Disney on Broadway! More to come in next week’s blog.