Question:
Planning a visit to NYC in December. Have tiks to Lion King, primarilyinterestedin seeing the work done to the New Amsterdam, but reviews from Minneapolistryout sold me. The show opened for previews on Oct 15. Has anyone seen it?Would like a few ( hopefully favorable) initial impressions.

Answer: my impressions:

the theatre is gorgeous. a really stunning renovation.

the show has, perhaps, one of the most amazing openings ever.from which it never recovers. the show has fantastic visuals all throughout. its a real triumph for the design team. but i found the whole thing rather empty. seemed like two different concepts battling it out on stage......sort of summed up when the representational 'lions', who are actors only identified as lions by the large masks they wear above their heads ...sharing the stage with larger than life literal re-creations of the disney sidekicks pumba and timon. kinda jarring. and i found the book scenes to be a bit of a snooze. it is, after all, a 90 minute movie padded out to a 2:45 show...and the 'book' of the show doesn't always play well within the rest of the theatrics onstage....but the visuals ARE stunning and there are several memorable and jaw dropping effects. unfortunately the audience i was with was SO impressed with the effects that they began to applaud and cheer them in the oddest places....like mufasa's death scene. here the hero (up to this point) has just been killed saving his son and you should feel sadness for this moment and the audience is wildly applauding the special effects going on at that moment (not the wildebeast stampede which has just ended...and should rightly be applauded) this too was a jarring moment. just made me wonder about what the audience for this show goes into the theatre expecting. but then i remember its disney and you can take that any way you want to. just doesn't seem to be my cup of tea when it comes to putting their movies on broadway. children who will talk A LOT during the show. if my audience was any indication....seems like parent s are taking their kids no matter how young they are and seem to have not instructed them on how to behave in a theatre. i realize that this is who the show is geared for but its a little disconcerting to be watching a show and hear a child screeching behind you in its loudest voice about something he/she sees on stage.