Show reviewed: Aladdin
Venue: New Amsterdam Theatre
Reviewer: Joseph Paul Hill
Ticket obtained: in-person lottery

The ideas and inspirations for Disney’s Aladdin, which opened on Broadway at the New Amsterdam Theatre in March 2014, are rooted in Disney’s 1992 animated film of the same title. At least, that’s the impression that Disney Theatrical Productions presents. The translation across mediums necessitated modifications, editions, and deletions since the tools and techniques of animation differ greatly from those of the theatre. In order to reflect upon how the theatrical producers chose to adapt the source material, I have chosen to examine a limited number of production elements in the musical that are notably different from their animated counterparts. In doing so I hope to glean a more general idea of how (and if) the producers’ dramaturgically justified their adaptation of the fictional world of Agrabah for the Broadway stage.

One of the most notable changes from the animated film is the elimination of the animal characters. Voiced by Gilbert Gottfried in the film, the villain’s sidekick Iago, a wise-talking parrot, becomes a parroting court jester figure onstage. Also absent from the stage is the hero’s monkey sidekick, Abu. Instead, Aladdin is given a trio of best friends: Babkak, Omar, and Kassim. Very similarly, three attendants or ladies in waiting replace Jasmine’s pet companion, the tiger Rajah. A couple other animals from the film are notably absent onstage, namely the elephant that features heavily in the song “Prince Ali” and the giant cobra that the villain Jafar transforms into during the film’s climax. However, as both of these animal appearances are the result of magical transformations, I will return to discuss them later.

Don Darryl Rivera as Iago contributes to the comedic tone of the musical very similarly to how Gilbert Gottfried’s parrot functioned in the film. The presence of a character alongside the villain allows Jafar to reveal his villainous plots and contrivances in dialogue rather than through soliloquies, which in musical comedy are generally limited to song. The humorous banter between villain and henchman is sinister without being overly dramatic, an important consideration in developing a theatrical work intended for a family audience. In design, Iago could have been fashioned as a puppet similar to that of the hornbill Zazu in the stage production of The Lion King. In fact, in Disney’s Aladdin: A Musical Spectacular, a 45-minute musical adaptation of the animated film that plays several times a day at Disney’s California Adventure theme park, Iago is just such a puppet. However, in morphing the parrot into a human, Aladdin’s production team seems to be actively resisting comparison with The Lion King.

This desire to not utilize puppetry in order to create an Agrabah noticeably distinct from other Broadway Disney settings perhaps also figured into the elimination of Abu and Rajah from the musical. However, in both of these instances, simply turning the animal characters into human characters with recognizable traits from their animated counterparts would not serve some of the thematic concerns of the work, so a different approach was necessary. As much as Aladdin seems to fit into the mold of a traditional musical comedy centered on a romantic couple, Aladdin is also a buddy comedy. In fact, the relationship between Genie and Aladdin is perhaps even more central to the plot than the romance between Aladdin and Jasmine. This is true of both the animated film and the musical. In the animation, Aladdin’s sidekick Abu does not rival Genie as Aladdin’s best friend because he is a monkey. Unlike Iago, the animated Abu does not have any dialogue, and although he certainly has character, his relationship to Aladdin is based on companionship rather than friendship. If a single man had played Abu onstage, Aladdin’s relationship to Abu might impose on his more central relationship with Genie. Abu as a man might also create uncertainty about Aladdin’s heteronormativity—a critique that the Walt Disney Company likely does not want to receive. So, instead of a single Abu, Aladdin has three friends who function as stock musical theatre characters: the playboy Kassim, the effeminate Omar, and the wisecracking (and possibly Jewish) Babkak. When Genie and Aladdin have their buddy song and dance in the middle of the second act (“Somebody’s Got Your Back”), Aladdin’s three friends sing backup to the duo. Their friendship is quite literally upstaged, but because there are three characters upstage instead of one, the shift in allegiance does not arouse suspicion. The two songs featuring the friend trio were written by composer Alan Menken and original Aladdin lyricist Howard Ashman for an early draft of the film prior to Ashman’s death in 1991. Thus, reinserting the trio into the musical also allows Disney Theatrical Productions to profit from audience sentimentality, restoring the lost work of a beloved theatre artist.

Additionally, having three friends nicely matches the theatrical and comedic rule of three. With the dance number “Babkak, Omar, Aladdin, Kassim,” Aladdin clearly lands within the realm of musical comedy—that is, a temporally regressive notion of musical comedy. (Aladdin is advertised with the tag line “Broadway’s New Musical Comedy.”) Just as the three male sailors from the 1944 Comden and Green musical On the Town nightly find their female counterparts at the Lyric Theatre directly across the street from Aladdin, each of Aladdin’s three companions finds his mate in one of Jasmine’s three attendants. These confidants eliminate the need (although perhaps not the audience desire) to have a tiger, live or not, onstage. Using the attendants in place of Rajah provides the same dialogical function and additionally provides onstage backups singers during Jasmine’s new song “These Palace Walls.” Importantly for Golden Age musical comedy, maintaining the rule of three means that when Aladdin and Jasmine are paired off during the finale, the other characters are neatly paired off as well.

Although not an animal, the character of the Magic Carpet is also omitted from the musical. There are a few possible reasons for the elimination of the carpet as a character. First of all, having an actor dressed as a carpet would not match the design aesthetics of the production. The carpet could have been rigged, but this would have been extremely technically demanding, especially considering the immense number of set pieces already utilized during the show; there likely would not have been room backstage or in the fly house for the additional rigging equipment required to have the Magic Carpet in multiple scenes. Furthermore, with the introduction of Aladdin’s friend trio, the addition of another friend might prove overwhelming. However, because the carpet did not appear earlier in the show, the audience expectation for its reveal during “A Whole New World” is arguably greater.

The Magic Carpet brings me to the second prevalent production element at play in the creation of an onstage Agrabah that stands out in the adaptation: the use of magic. The presence of Genie and the granting of wishes necessitates the integration of magic. The animated film is particularly reliant on Genie’s magic as a visual element of the medium. The animated Genie is a shape shifter, repeatedly transforming his costume, stature, and key facial features to suit the plethora of impersonations and character voices that actor Robin Williams developed in the recording studio. Genie is also responsible for the transformation of Abu into an elephant on which Aladdin makes his grand entrance as Prince Ali Ababwa. Such transformations and shape shifting work well for the medium of animation but are difficult and ill suited for theatre in such great quantity. Thus, Disney Theatrical Productions had to be incredibly intentional about magical moments in Aladdin. The reveal of the Magic Carpet is one such moment. Creating the same filmic world travel would be difficult onstage, so instead, the musical invested in the development of flight equipment to make the Magic Carpet appear as though it were actually flying over the stage without any visible cables or traditional theatre magic. (I must admit that I was so amazed at the brilliance of the theatrical illusion that immediately following the performance I contacted a colleague who knew crew members on the production who could explain exactly how the theatrical illusion worked.) Instead of complicating the production number with scale models of monuments and an abundance of theatrical fog, the production team decided to wow the audience with an empty stage and theatrical ingenuity. Set off by a backdrop of LED lights for the night sky, the theatrical image actually generated many audible reactions among audience members.

The song “Prince Ali” in the film is another scene heavily dependent upon the visual representation of magic. Without a giant elephant to ride, the production team had to build theatrical splendor using other methods, especially since the song now begins the second act. Physically unable to represent the plethora of possessions, animals, and attendants that are mentioned in the song’s lyrics, Prince Ali’s train grows exponentially through the use of quick changes. The ensemble of twenty actors rotates on and offstage in relatively quick succession during moments between choreographed dances and undergoes multiple costume changes in order for approximately one hundred distinct “characters” to parade into the palace. The intricately detailed costumes create the visual splendor that the song’s lyrics demand. A similar visual magic is employed earlier in the production during the dance number “Friend Like Me.” Along with quick changes, many of which are necessary for the production choreography which blends multiple styles of quintessential musical theatre dance including a tap dance break and a kick line, Genie’s magic is created through theatrical illusion: ensemble members literally launch out of trap doors, fireworks and other pyrotechnics fly over the actors, and a platform rises out of the stage to reveal a giant staircase. Alone, each of these elements are standard theatrical devices, but they are combined with exact precision and timing so as to build audience enthusiasm.

The only visually disappointing moment of the production is the show’s climax because it fails to match both the splendor of the animated film. The visual splendor of this magical sequence is nearly nonexistent onstage. While standing on a hidden lift that continues to rise as each successive wish is granted, Jafar’s costume layers seem to fly off him through cleverly designed costume layers. However, there is no transformation into a cobra. Jafar moves from wishing to be sultan to wishing himself a genie, and he disappears into his lamp by being lowered through a trap door as copious amounts of fog billow out onto the stage. The sequence, while certainly heightened by lighting effects and musical underscoring, is also unsatisfying because it lacks the same intensity of magical (read: theatrical) illusions utilized elsewhere in the production. While this scene is undoubtedly structured as the dramatic climax of the story—the final showdown between the protagonist and the antagonist—this was far from the visual climax of the musical. It was a complete dramaturgical disappointment.

Throughout watching the work, the role of my theatrical expectations as an audience member became increasingly apparent. Adaptation, especially that of an animated Disney film, involves the audience coming in with very clear preconceived notions both of how the animated film should play out onstage and what elements of a Broadway musical should be present. Clearly the development of Aladdin was influenced by Disney Theatrical Productions’ previous financial successes and failures, Agrabah being the fifth Disney animated setting to be realized on the Broadway stage, but exactly how Agrabah was created dramaturgically is show specific.

Much more could (and should) be said about the decision to locate Agrabah in a non-identified area of Arabia, which most noticeably results in the employment of a multi-ethnic cast of actors. Notions of “Arabia” and Orientalism also figure heavily into both the scenic and costume designs of the production. However, such an analysis would require an extensive examination of Disney’s adaptation of the eighteenth century Aladdin story into the 1992 animated film, which is beyond the scope of the current project.

So perhaps what Disney employed was “safe dramaturgy.” Several adjustments had to be made to adapt the piece, but innovation was not the name of the game in the few instances where choices had to be made. Producing Broadway musicals is a substantial financial risk, so in creating Aladdin Disney Theatrical Productions undoubtedly reexamined its previous musical productions to capitalize on success, here defined by the show’s longevity and financial returns. Far from creating theatrical art that questions received narratives of tradition and history, Aladdin seeks to maintain and profit from Disney’s already successful brand.