Just recently, I went to see The Lion King downtown on November 10th 2010. Overall, I thought that the show was pretty good. I definitely had higher expectations after hearing so many great things about it. Our seats were on the second floor balcony on the right hand side. They were not the best, but we could see excellently.

First of all, I thought that the costumes and props for the show were fantastic. All of the props and some of the costumes were very elaborate and detailed. You could tell that the crew had put tons of time and effort into making these. Their effort really paid off. There were many setting changes and all of them went very smoothly. The costumes, for the most part, were excellent as well. The adult lions had simple costumes on their bodies, but the masks that they wore were very detailed. This looked great on stage! One thing that I did not like about the masks was that the mask was above their head. When a lion was standing up straight, the mask would be right above their head to where their faces could be seen. Then, when I lion bent or crouched down, the mask would move down to right in front of their faces. I did not like how the actors’ faces were showing for almost the whole performance. What I did find out was that if you had seats on the top balcony on the third floor, the mask looked like it was covering the actor’s face the whole time. Also, there were many setting changes during the performance. All of the backgrounds for the scenes were great! With the combination of a great set, awesome background, and good lights, the whole set was wonderful. Not only did the scenes look great, but when it was time to switch props and backgrounds, it was done very smoothly and worked well.

Next, the singing, dancing, and acting were okay. There were actors that ranged from amazing to just okay. I think that if you are in a Broadway show, you should really show that you are better than anyone else who tried out. The little boy who played young Simba was great! He was very animated with his voice and actions. I think he fit the part very well. I thought that the actors who played the hyenas were a bit too animated. I almost found that they were too loud and obnoxious. The rest of the actors were pretty good. No one stood out as excellent or horrible. With the dancing, I found that some scenes had excellent dancers others had the not so good dancers. The dancers that were really great were the dancers in the hyena scene. The same dancers were also in the scene where they sang Hakuna Matata. This time the dancers were dressed as plants. The other scene that had great dancing was the opener, The Circle of Life. Other than that, the rest of the scenes had mediocre dancing. I kept finding that the dancers were not together for timing and their formations seemed messy. Also, the boy who played young Simba was not a good dancer at all, but his voice covered up for that. The music in the whole performance was amazing! All of the instruments sounded fantastic together and the singers were all great as well. Our seats were right by the people playing the instruments, so it was very cool to get to see them play. Also, since the music was live, it sounded even better than on a CD. The singers were very good too! Their voices fit right in with the music that was playing. There was no one in the whole show who sounded bad. Young Simba was an amazing singer. His voice was so adorable and sounded great!

I believe that just about anyone of any age would be able to go to the show and enjoy it tremendously. The only problem might be that it is long. There is an intermission, but young kids with short attention spans probably would not bet the best to bring to the show. This show is great for a person of any gender, but if you do not enjoy musicals at all or do not like the story of The Lion King, then this would not be the show for you. I would also recommend knowing the basic story before going to see it if you are not good at following plots. At times things in the story were skipped or went by very quickly, but the happened rarely. There were definitely clear positives and negatives about the show. I was expecting it to be better overall after the things that I had head, but it was still a very good show.