Wednesday 13 July 2011

A Whole New Life

On Tuesday Ron Clements and John Musker (the writer/directors of Disney's The Great Mouse Detective, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules and The Princess and the Frog) got to see their film come alive on stage in Seattle!

These two men (along with Alan Menken and Howard Ashman) are responsible for launching Disney's renaissance in 1989 with The Little Mermaid and without them you more than likely wouldn't be reading this now.  We owe them all a huge debt of gratitude for the work they did (and continue to do) at Disney.  I can only imagine how good it must have felt for them to see the original vision for Aladdin brought to life at The 5th and I'm delighted they got the chance to be there.  5th Avenue have posted more details (and more pictures) in their backstage blog here.

Ron and John with the cast of Aladdin, Photo by 5th Avenue
As well as showing us the amazing Ron and John meeting the cast, the above photo also gives us our first look at the FANTASTIC costumes for the show!  Aladdin (Adam Jacobs) and Jasmine (Courtney Reed) look beautiful in their wedding outfits, Genie (James Monroe Iglehart) looks great as he sets off to see the world (he's freeeee!!), Iago (Don Darryl Rivera) looks good in human form, and Jonathan Freeman is Jafar brought to life!!

The additional picture on The 5th's site shows the full ensemble in their end of show costumes.

Andrew Keenan-Bolger also tweeted that he has learnt a new song that will be going in the show tonight, and he has kindly confirmed that the song is a "fun new reprise of "High Adventure"!

Have to apologise now as I unintentionally took a few days off this week (wedding stuff has been keeping me very busy) and didn't post these as soon as I could have;

Theater Mania has posted an interview with director Casey Nicholaw where he discusses Aladdin: The New Stage Musical and his approach to staging the songs for the show, his previous work on The Book of Mormon and Elf, and what it was like winning a Tony Award!

D23 (the official Disney fanclub) have posted a short feature on the show; "Wishes Come True in Seattle", it's nothing we haven't seen or heard already but it's nice to see Disney promoting the show.  I'm really hoping they do a full feature on the show in the next issue!

And I think that's me all caught up! To paraphrase Aladdin, tomorrow "it will go short and sweet, I'll be wed down the street" so I probably won't be able to update anything for the next few days, but I'll be back in time for the show's official opening on 21st July, so hopefully we can expect lots more pictures and videos as things get locked in place!

Edit - It was brought to my attention a while back that the 5th Avenue blog page I linked to above has been taken down for some reason and I was asked if I could post the other picture.  I was waiting for 5th Avenue to confirm this was ok, but they're really busy so I've not had a response yet.  However, given that I've not been asked to take the other picture down (and Broadway World has both pictures up as well) I think it's ok for me to post this.  Sorry for the long delay!

Ron and John with the cast of Aladdin, Photo by 5th Avenue

3 comments:

  1. The site says that the page doesn't exist :( Did you happen to save the pictures? I'm sure everyone who comes here would like to see them :)

    Also, a new commercial is airing, with lots of clips from the show.

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  2. I'm not sure what the problem is with The 5th's site :(

    There's only 1 more picture (Ron and John with the whole ensemble) and I've got it saved, just waiting to hear back from 5th Avenue that I'm ok to post it! Once I've got the all clear I'll put it up here!

    Thanks for the update on the new trailer! Off to youtube to try and find it now!!

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  3. Hi ladyorihime,

    Sorry it's taken so long. I still haven't been given an official "all clear", but since Broadway World has both images up and given how much time has passed without being asked to take the other image down, I figured I may as well post it here!

    Hope you like it!!

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