Las Vegas Weekly

May 16, 2009 · 11:43 AM

Exclusive Photo Gallery: Praise is unanimous at The Lion King premiere

By Robin Leach

Alton White, Julie Taymor, Kissy Simmons and Clifton Oliver.

Photo: TVT

The raves were unanimous from first-nighters at the premiere of Disney’s The Lion King at Mandalay Bay last night. “Genius, pure genius,” music arranging and producing legend Quincy Jones told me. “It’s my 15th time seeing this show, and this one was the best!”

“A home run,” said Mandalay Bay President Bill Hornbuckle, who had tried for 12 years to get the stage production to the Strip. He confirmed to me that in a special salute to Kissy Simmons, who stars as Nala, he’s having a 90-foot-tall image of her installed on one face of his resort casino. “We’ll start next week. It will take 10 days, but anywhere you drive on the Strip, you will see her and be captivated by her. She will be in her Lion King costume.”

Both Siegfried & Roy told me: “Wonderful, simply wonderful.” Roy also told me he was feeling great, sticking to his daily exercise programs and making progress.

The Lion King producer Thomas Schumacher sat at my booth in Mix atop The Hotel at Mandalay Bay, where Disney brass threw an after-party for cast, crew and seven directors of other Lion King companies they’d flown in for the premiere. Thomas told me: “The show played fantastically tonight. The big question was, ‘Does the Vegas audience want to watch a real two hour-plus theatrical show in two acts? The answer is a resounding yes. The cast is extraordinary, directly from Broadway. It’s everything I wanted it to be.

“One of the reasons it plays so well, you could have seen it tonight in London, Paris, Japan, Hamburg. We’ve been in Seoul, Shanghai, Johannesburg. This is the story of everybody, every community, everybody in the world is represented in this piece, and that’s part of why we see ourselves. There are aspects of all of us in it, in the different characters, and that’s why it works.

“This was show No. 15 in running order. The reaction tonight was interesting. The audience actually listened intently. Don’t downgrade the Vegas audience; they don’t just want something sparkly in front of them. They laughed at all the jokes. They got the viva Las Vegas line that we included just for here. They got the live from the Savannah Hotel that we included just for here.

“This is probably the last version we can imagine in this scale. This tonight was the full Broadway production, and in some ways bigger, better and definitely more beautiful. This was the big one. We still have foreign productions to do. We’ll be taking it to Spain and Singapore next and a British tour, but nothing again on this scale. I couldn’t be happier. I gave it more than 10 out of 10, and so did everybody else.”

The only sad part of the evening was the last-minute absence of lyricist Tim Rice. He had planned to fly to Las Vegas on Thursday from London and was at the airport when he received a call that his mother was seriously ill and canceled the flight.

Director Julie Taymor greeted her stars Alton White (Mufasa), Kissy Simmons (Nala), Clifton Oliver (Simba) and Jade Nelson (Young Nala). She told them it was the best opening night show of all 15 prior productions, including Broadway. “They brought something truly meaningful and intense to their performances tonight,” Julie told me at my booth. “You would think after all of them, I couldn’t be moved, but even I was teary-eyed. It was incredibly special, and if you’d told me that it would be that emotional an experience in Las Vegas, I would never have believed you. I was immensely proud of what they achieved tonight. It could not have been better.”

Julie, who is now working on the Broadway staging of Spider-Man, also confirmed that Quincy Jones and she are hoping to partner on a project that might debut in Las Vegas before going to Broadway. Quincy and Julie told me it’s far too early to even hint at what it could be!

But Julie did tell me that before the premiere last night, she went backstage to form a circle of life with the performers. “It’s a first-night tradition everywhere we open the show, but Las Vegas was different. Normally I talk about how Africa was the cradle of civilization, but this time I told the cast they had to bring the cradle of civilization to Vegas. I think they did that with such meaning and conviction, it made it the best performance I’ve seen.”

“It was an extraordinary experience for me and the audience. I know it was for the cast, too. I am thrilled and very happy The Lion King completed its circle of life and roared in Vegas.”

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

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