THE LION KING & BEAUTY AND THE BEAST & AIDA were all better than A YEAR WITH FROG AND TOAD. At the very least, Disney has the best use spectacle and it's very impressive. AIDA was amazing - the only flaws in the book were with some songs that should have been turned into dialogue scenes: everything with Radames' father. "Like Father, Like Son" and "Another Pyramid."
BEAUTY & THE BEAST was a good start. I enjoyed the new songs however the show is written for children, so to say the book is awful is to say children are expected to sophisticated and smart enough to understand Othello or Antigone.
THE LION KING was better. Julie Taymor's artistic vision was BRIlLIANT.
MARY POPPINS is transferring. TARZAN is opening. LITTLE MERMAID in 2007. No PINOCCHIO...not yet. So that's 4-5 theatres by 2007/08.
And who knows? Maybe TARZAN will flop? I don't see it happening initially however it could occur within a year. And who knows about MARY POPPINS either? Didn't it get mixed reviews in London? And BEAUTY & THE BEAST is rumored to close to make room for LITTLE MERMAID.
If anything, Disney did three things for Broadway:
1) Cleaned up 42nd Street;
2) Sparked interest in children and families going to see a show; and
3) Provided three amazing shows I had the privilege to see and I LOOK FORWARD to TARZAN, POPPINS, and MERMAID. Especially MERMAID.
"The Spectacle has, indeed, an emotional attraction of its own, but, of all the parts, it is the least artistic, and connected least with the art of poetry. For the power of Tragedy, we may be sure, is felt even apart from representation and actors. Besides, the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet."
--Aristotle
