5. Aida
Opened March 23, 2000 – closed September 5, 2004
What do you get when you cross Disney with a hundred-year-old opera, and then add Elton John to the mix? Aida. Yet another version of the famous “Romeo and Juliet” plot, Aida is the story of two forbidden lovers in ancient Egypt, and the Broadway musical has a fun, pop/rock score composed by Elton John, with lyrics by the legendary Tim Rice (Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, and The Lion King are just a handful of his musical theater credits).
After the huge commercial success of Disney’s first Broadway venture, Beauty and the Beast, the company was understandably excited, and ever since, Disney has been producing some of the most lavish, expensive musicals on Broadway. Most of their successful (and not-so-successful) endeavors have been based off of Disney-owned animated musicals, such as The Little Mermaid, Tarzan, and The Lion King, aimed at young audiences, for whom there isn’t a lot of entertainment on Broadway. But they also had a big hit with Aida, a show aimed more at adults than children.
The original story of Aida was written in 1870 and turned into an Italian opera by Verdi. And at the turn of the millennium, Elton John and Tim Rice rewrote the show into a rock opera produced by Disney. The forbidden love story also deals somewhat with interracial relationships, as the two leads are traditionally played by a Caucasian male and an African-American female who fall in love, much to both their families’ disgust. Radames is the son of an Egyptian military figure, and Aida is the Nubian princess. At a time when Egypt and Nubia were in constant war, this was deeply looked down upon.
I can’t emphasize just how much I love the music in Aida. It’s so very rock, and so very Elton John. I personally do not have a taste for opera, and found the Disney Aida much more to my liking. In addition to the hard-edged, fast-paced songs riddled with light cues (such as “Another Pyramid,” where Radames’s power-hungry father sings of his plans to assassinate the Pharaoh, and “Fortune Favors the Brave,” the anthem of Radames and his ship crew of young explorers and adventurers), there are gentle ballads that feel like classic love songs (“I Know The Truth,” sung by a heartbroken woman who has caught her fiance with another woman the day before their wedding, and the theme song for Aida, and forbidden love in general, “Elaborate Lives”). There’s music on the Aida soundtrack to match any mood. I will interject, though, and admit that my absolute favorite is the not very story-relevant “My Strongest Suit,” the first song I heard from this show. It’s the character-defining song sung by Amneris, the Pharaoh’s daughter and Radames’s fiance, who from a distance appears to be a shallow princess, who values her looks and her fashion sense above all else. The lyrics crack me up every time, and combined with the pop/rock music and the impressive belter-style vocals, the song seriously leaves me breathless. It’s an excellent dance/performance number.
Quite possibly the best thing about this show is that Disney, miraculously, did it full justice. Aida is, at heart, a tragedy, and I was so relieved to see that that wasn’t downplayed in the slightest, with no happy fairytale endings. Disney’s musicals have also always had more adult-aimed humor than their movies, since theater is considered to be an art for the more mature, and Aida also upholds that. (I always love a good laugh, so how many jokes in a musical make me laugh out loud is a big part of the rating for me.) If you want to experience what an extravagant Disney musical production looks like, but aren’t quite ready to dive into the sugar-coated world of The Little Mermaid or Mary Poppins, Aida is an excellent choice.
Four years may be considered a short-lived run compared to the Disney hits The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, both with runs over a decade long, but Aida actually did much better than was anticipated. (In the Disney record books, Aida actually beat out the Broadway version of The Little Mermaid, which was expected to be a huge success, in both ticket sales and run length.) However, it has been over on Broadway and hasn’t toured in quite a few years, and Aida is now a show available for high schools and regional theaters to perform. So any chances you get to see it from now on will probably be small-scale productions, but the very heart of this great story can’t be broken down, no matter what light effects or fancy set pieces are cut. I don’t think many non-theater people would like this show, but anyone who does enjoy the art, seeing Aida would definitely be a worthwhile way to spend an evening.
Images taken from flickr.com and last.fm.
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