Timeless Aladdin enchants
and thrills a packed house
The tenth highest-grossing Broadway production of all time at Place des Arts
By Byron Toben
March 30, 2023
Evenko, the Quebec-based producer, has done it again! Its series of distributing hit Broadway musical shows, in conjunction with the John Gore Organization, opened to a packed house at the 2,996-seat Salle Wilfred Pelletier at Place des Arts on March 28, to witness the 2011 musical comedy Aladdin, now the tenth highest-grossing Broadway production of all time. Pretty good for a show that started as a Disney animated film in 1999!
In 1980, 42nd Street became the first Broadway hit based on a 1933 film. Since then, there have been some 200 such reversals, including a few based on animated films (The Lion King, Shrek, Beauty and the Beast, for example). Disney’s Aladdin is based on Aladdin and his Magic Lamp of the Thousand and One Nights Arabic stories of the 9th and 10th centuries (other famous stories involved Sinbad the Sailor and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.)
The show features thirty performers, fourteen principal characters and sixteen chorus and understudies. A deep-pit live orchestra – keyboard, trumpet, trombone, bass, and percussion – is powerful and rhythmic.
Aladdin (Adi Roy) is a likeable street urchin who lives by stealing vegetables. He chances to encounter the Sultan’s daughter, Jasmine (Senzel Ahmady), who conceals her identity to wander the streets in a pique against her father (Sorab Wadia), who insists she soon marries a rich prince, whom she finds shallow.
The show features thirty performers, fourteen principal characters and sixteen chorus and understudies. A deep-pit live orchestra – keyboard, trumpet, trombone, bass, and percussion – is powerful and rhythmic.
The two hit it off, but the Sultan’s officers find her and return her to the palace. Meanwhile, the Sultan’s evil vizier, Jafar (Anand Nagraj) and his lackey Iago (Aaron Choi) discover Aladdin as a useful tool to enter a forbidding cave to gather objects inside. Aladdin does so and discovers an ancient lamp, which, when rubbed, releases a magical genie (Marcus M. Martin) trapped inside, who grants Aladdin three wishes. Aladdin does so and becomes a non-shallow prince to court Jasmine. He even gets to take her on a ride on a flying carpet.
Still, the road is hard with counterplots by the evil vizier, while the audience is treated to lots of sword fights and eighteen songs accompanied by exuberant dancing, especially by the corpulent genie who was amazingly light on his feet.
Song titles like Arabian Nights, Proud of You, Boy, Somebody’s Got Your Back and A Whole New World drew much applause and reprises. The music was composed by Alan Menken (two Academy Awards) with words by a trio of Howard Ashman (Beauty and the Beast), Tim Rice (Jesus Christ Superstar) and Chad Beguelin (The Prom).
‘Song titles like Arabian Nights, Proud of You, Boy, Somebody’s Got Your Back and A Whole New World drew much applause and reprises.’
The ancient story of A Thousand and One Nights, born in Persia and embellished with Syrian-Arabic additions, has many royalty-free adaptation possibilities that storyteller Scheherazade, to save her life each night, could never have imagined in the digital future.
With pent-up inflation, tickets seem a bit more pricey than usual but are still a bargain compared to New York prices, let alone the travel and accommodation costs.
Disney’s Aladdin continues at the Place des Arts until April 2.
Images: Deen vanMeer, Disney
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Byron Toben, a past president of The Montreal Press Club, has been WestmountMag.ca’s theatre reviewer since July 2015. Previously, he wrote for since terminated web sites Rover Arts and Charlebois Post, print weekly The Downtowner and print monthly The Senior Times. He also is an expert consultant on U.S. work permits for Canadians.
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