The Lion King

Ebony, July, 1998

The little Black children in the front row stared with wide-eye, slack-jawed amazement -- the King, the King, the King, was... Black? Was this Broadway? The King, the Queen, the spiritual guide and other principal cast members are African-American or African in the predominantly Black cast of Broadway's The Lion King, which has been turning cultural heritage into big box office.

Based on Disney's animated film, the musical production has been sold out almost every night since it opened in November at New York's New Amsterdam Theatre. South African sensation Lebo M greatly expanded the original score with authentic African music, rhythms and chants and an ensemble which includes a largely South African chorus. He wrote four new songs, arranged many others and directed the chorus. "The whole basis of my work is my early experience in Africa," he says. "It comes from real people and their music. It's not academic."

The play is sung and spoken in Sesotho, Swahili, Xhosa, Zulu and English.

Lebo M, an abbreviated version of his last name, Morake, is a native of Soweto. Currently, he is developing an international music recording project with Quincy Jones to celebrate the 80th birthday of South African President Nelson Mandela. Lebo's wife, Nandi, is in the cast of The Lion King and the couple has four children. The 32-year-old says that working on the project has been "the most gratifying part of my career so far." Lebo has been called the "glue that holds the entire piece together" by the actors who give much of the credit for the musical's success to his haunting melodies. "In the film, the chorus was background score, but in live theater, it has become principal character, both visually and aurally," says director/creator Julie Taymor, who has received high praise for hermastery of the mixture of the music and cultural sets with the half-human and half-animal actors.

Taymor uses masks, puppetry and inventive staging to tell the story of a young lion cub named Simba as he struggles to accept the responsibilities of adulthood and his destined role as king. Renowned choreographer Garth Fagan makes the musical move from first curtain to final bow. "The challenge was to do something that is complex from a dance perspective but still have the dancers survive the rigors of eight shows a week," he told In Theater. The final production is wowing theater critics. As the New York Times review says of the stage production, "There is simply nothing else like it."

Veteran African-American actor Samuel E. Wright, who plays King Mufasa, agrees that this is a profoundly unusual situation on Broadway. "I was proud of the fact that this animal, which usually is portrayed as someone blond because use of the mane and that whole thing, was conceived as something very, very African and close to the native people of that particular land." Adding that starring roles are still hard to come by for Black actors, he says he's very proud of his role as the king. "Throughout my entire career, I've always tried to do roles that were worthy of our situation in the world and moved us forward," he says. "This was one of those situations and I'm glad I took it."

All of the actors were impressed with the effort made to keep this production authentic, dignified and respectful of African culture. South African recording star Tsidii Le Loka, who plays the spiritual guide, "Rafiki," was enormously concerned about her culture's presentation. "I'm such a proud person and I come from such an experience of so much insult to our culture in so many ways that anything that remotely resembles that [insult] I would not want to be associated with."

Le Loka was asked to conduct seminars to familiarize the other actors, many of them African-American, with the South African vocal style and culture. She also wrote her character',s chants, which she performs in Sesotha and Swahili. She is very happy that she was able to use the real chants and present them without translation. The meaning comes through in her performance, she says, adding that she is insulted by people simp]y trying to mimic her language. "I mean, `Can you speak or can't you speak?'" she asks. "Are you going to make a sincere effort here or are you going to stand there and insult me?"

Worlds away, literally and figuratively, from the singing crows in Disney's 1941 production of Dumbo is Disney's new Lion King. "It's a wonderful thing," says Heather Headley, who plays Simba's girlfriend, Nala. "You think about the last time that we had a successful musical on Broadway, where we weren't prostitutes or in demeaning positions." Headley was born in Trinidad, but moved to the States with her parents. After her junior year at Northwestern University, she joined the cast of Ragtime and from there she was chosen for The Lion King.

"It's not often that you get to do the two biggest shows in Broadway within the same year," she adds.

The cast performs eight shows a week, often wearing extremely heavy costumes that keep a company physical therapist busy soothing everything from simple muscle aches and pains to the occasional stress fractures. But they aren't complaining. "I've been around a long time on these streets and a hit is hard to come by," says Wright. Now 50 years old, the married father of three teenagers appeared on Broadway in Promises, Promises, Pippin', Jesus Christ Superstar and The Tap Dance Kid, for which he received a Tony nomination. His song, "Under the Sea," won an Academy Award.