The crowd silences as the curtains open to reveal a lush savanna teeming with animals. As the iconic song “Circle of Life” begins, creatures interact with the crowd and stream through passageways around the stage — from the elephants above one’s head to the soaring birds — all but a reach away. The sounds of nature and orchestral music fill the air and come down with a powerful thud as the young protagonist is introduced, opening the show.
“The Lion King” debuted nearly three decades ago on Broadway and spent years touring worldwide. With its 2025 tour across North America, the show captivates audiences from the moment the lights dim and the music begins. The tour made a stop-over at Dallas from June 3 to July 4 at the Music Hall at Fair Park, one of the major locations that houses Broadway shows in Dallas.
The show follows a young lion cub, Simba, who will reign as the next king of the Pride Lands. The beginning scenes show the balance between what the kingdom expects him to be, a fearless king like his father, and his innate nature, one of playful curiosity. He finds himself playing in the grass, for which the Broadway crew designed flowing grass skirts to create the illusion of wind in the Savanna. The music complimenting the airy atmosphere provides moments for the audience to connect with the characters in a light-hearted introduction.
While many Broadway shows use props and costuming to elevate the scene, for the Lion King, these objects represents real-life animals and their movement, such as the four individuals making up the large elephant’s legs or the gazelle characters cast members wore on their heads while loping around stage.The show sets itself apart from other Broadway shows by requiring actors not only master the “triple threat” of dancing, singing and acting, but also successfully coordinate and move the props and animals. Through actors understanding their prop and the specific movements each animal had, they brought life into the inanimate.
As the story progresses, the music and props play a pivotal role in defining the antagonist, Scar, and the world around him. Desolate and devoid of life, his environment differs greatly from the Pride Lands, full of carcasses, bones and jarring music. Since the cast members have increased mobility compared to the animals in the original movie, scenes such as the hyenas’ introduction create a stronger sense of impending doom as they sing “Chow Down.”
The story’s many supporting characters remain pivotal through making the story modern in a subtle way. For instance, Mufasa’s hornbill assistant, Zazu, calls out an outfit on the stage, asking if it is from Target, while a look into Scar’s humor shows him becoming upset overhearing the song “Let it Go” from “Frozen,” a Disney cross-over to this adaptation. While the show dates back to 1997, it has stayed relevant with the times, finding the right balance between modernizing it and keeping it the classic it is.
The story reaches a haunting emotional pitch as Mufasa dies in a wildebeest stampede, a scene seemingly difficult to replicate because of the several movements and angles in the original film. To get close the dramatic nature of the original, Broadway used a play of lights, with red ominous lighting filling the stage in various angles to represent confusion as well as sound effects of the wildebeest coming in the direction of the audience. Done tactfully, the scene creates the pinnacle of confusion, only to be stunned into silence with the death of the king.
In the second half of the adaptation the young actor playing Simba transitions out to a grown one, representing the years that pass after he left the Pride Lands and Scar became king. The transition is displayed in a more epic manner than the film adaptation, with an abrupt introduction to older Simba as he swings through the jungle with his two friends, Timon and Pumba. Their calm and worry-free personalities soon become his nature, opening to the song “Hakuna Matata.”
The scenes with Scar reveal a barren wasteland with him unable to respect the balance of the kingdom, audience members see the latter half of the show bringing out various emotions from the cast, namely Simba’s internal struggle. The actor’s confusion along with clarity shines through in the song “He Lives in You,” a journey the audience is able to take with Simba and as he navigates through his internal emotions and discovering who he is.
With the final battle being the climax of the performance, the orchestration and music that supplements the defeat of Scar and the reign of Simba as the true king brings a richness to the show with its triumphant sounds that fill the air. As the various animals and the kingdom is restored to what it once was, audience members are taken back to the beginning with the reprisal of “Circle of Life.”
The Broadway effectively found a balance between the original film’s animation and the hyperrealism found in the live-action films, which many people found themselves unable to connect with. As the show ended, and the lights opened to the fluorescent ones from up above, audience members couldn’t help but find themselves taken back to an alternate world — the one Broadway opened them up to once more: the Pride Lands.
