Visiting Agrabah: Disney’s Aladdin, UK Tour
When Aladdin swoops into town, you’ve got to go! And if you’re not swishing around in Agrabah’s stagey marketplace, are you even there? The colours pop on stage, the music bops and the magic carpet ride is truly enthrallingly magical.
Whilst not quite on the same level as the DeLorean flying in Back To The Future, the magic carpet’s maneuvers are still impressive. Overall I came away feeling that this Disney musical would make a great first family theatre trip — it’s very visual, the plot and the music zips along and it’s not exposition heavy. However, it is long for a school night.
Sadly Abu, Aladdin’s loyal movie sidekick is gone — instead replaced by a trio of comedy friends. Surely Abu could have been a puppet? The comedy instead comes from the villains of the piece who are in full magnificent pantomime ‘boo-hiss’ gravitas mode. At the same time there’s no Iago or Rajah either, so…
Well used are static backdrops, lighting and visual effects to create the sense of entering the treasure filled cave, the palace, the night-time sky for the magic carpet ride and ‘that song’. What does need a bit of work is the cave sequence where props are visibly smuggled back out of the cave mouth which has seemingly closed Aladdin in forever. It needs to be hidden a bit better or surely they could just follow the props out and escape that way? No need for a Genie.
I also think the show needs to look a bit more closely at its Orientalist tropes. All the midriffs, hip swaying, scimitars ready to cut something off are cliches — and it would be interesting to see the show really lean into Middle Eastern dance forms more. There’s hints of Bellydance at points — but there could be more, and more varied forms too. Much of the time, the stage is being filled by skirt swishing (and a guard inspecting some silver plate for a nano-second!) Whereas it could have been an opportunity to enter some whole new worlds. On the other hand, this is a fantasy and a fairy tale…and like the ladies in the market we’re just here to gape at the wonders — and laugh at a musical whose tongue is firmly in its cheek!
However, there are some great costumes, particularly on the men. And no-one really behaves according to type — Jasmine is a thoroughly modern, educated and intelligent Princess (even if everyone does go on only about how beautiful she is), and her father, whilst wanting her to marry for the good of the kingdom because of tradition/law, is a benevolent ruler and loving father. I also like that the pointy pikes and scimitars are thoroughly tinny, so that every time they clash during a fight everyone knows reassuringly that they’re not real. And soldiers apparently killed reassuringly bounce up, back to life for the next fight — or a song and dance number.
Another thing the show does really well is deliver a terrific jazz and swing based score — with gusto! The conductor and orchestra were superb. It also leans into 1930’s musical spectacle aspirations — there’s a wonderful sparkly tap dance number, which cries out for giant dimes to be danced upon too — and some humourous Strictly references. Kudos too to the whole cast pulling off complicated abstract gestures in the marketplace dance off. Whilst the Genie is always going to be coming up against Robin Williams’ bold and blue larger than life creation, here we’ve gone a bit more RuPaul — and it slays. Wonderfully, despite a smaller cast, the entrance and bigging up of the ‘Prince’ into Agrabah is re-created very effectively, though one of the umbrellas looked a bit dodgily weather-beaten.
Where it does slow is the archetypal Disney angst moment where Aladdin as Prince starts to question who he really is, why he wants to live a lie and deceive the woman he loves. Jasmine is reduced to one word answers here — and we really lose the sense of her character, our feisty heroine reduced to monosyllables, waiting around to be rescued. Though we do achieve almost equal rights at the end — and political/social/cultural revolution - as Jasmine can choose who she wants to marry — and co-rule!
Nonetheless, the cast sing and dance with relish, the characterisations are strong, Jasmine sparkles and cogitates — and the villain is sucked down into the lamp, at his own command, in a pleasing whoosh of dry ice. Enjoy the class warfare, the glitter and the cave’s voice as we all seek ‘the diamond in the rough’…
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