The Past And Present Collide: The Lion King

Saturday, thanks to my generous in-laws, my wife and I were able to see The Lion King - the Broadway musical. Overall, I enjoyed it. I have to say, I think that movies adapted into musicals just don't flow quite as well as actual musicals.

And something about the costumes didn't quite jive with me. Don't get me wrong, they are brilliant, revolutionary, all that good stuff. They were trying to make humans look like cartoon animals. But I had a hard time not looking at the human bits that showed through. The human heads under the lion heads, for example. And Mufasa carried swords... that was just wacky. Also, in the middle of "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" there was a musical interlude where human ballet dancers (with no obvious "pretend I'm a gazelle"-type markings) came out and spun around for a bit.

The music, of course, is great. I'll say "for the most part", but that's only because there's always been something about "Hakuna Matata" that just annoys the heck out of me. I don't know why, but I always cringe on that song.

The lady playing Rafiki (the monkey) was flat-out brilliant. She commanded everybody's attention every time she was on stage.

So, like I said, overall I enjoyed it. It's no Phantom of the Opera, of course. :) Now, what does this have to do with a story from my past?

In college, I was in the Oklahoma State University Marching Band. We always had one game each season that was a high-school "band day" sort of thing. Kiddos from high school bands all over the state would come make noise with us on the field at halftime of some game. One year, the music we played was all from The Lion King.

The percussion director was a man named Wayne Bovenschen (he's still there, in fact). He was conducting for Band Day, perched up on a 15-foot ladder so that all 3,000 of us on the field could see him. At some point in the performance (it may have been the last song), we played "Can You Feel The Love Tonight". Remember, this is going on at halftime of a Big 12 (Big 8, at the time) college football game. Granted, it was an OSU game, but even so, there were 10+ thousand people in the stands, watching us.

So, we get to that song, and our cheesy-voiced announcer shouts out over the PA system, "And now, our combined bands will perform, ... YOU CAN FEEL MY LOVE TONIGHT!"

Wayne nearly fell off the ladder.

I figure that it was a pretty generous offer on the part of Mr. Announcer, given how many people he was simultaneously propositioning. Personally?... I decided to pass.