DURHAM -- Although director Julie Taymor is currently mired in controversy over her troubled musical version of "Spider-Man," she'll always be remembered as the creative force behind "The Lion King," now entering its 14th year on Broadway. Taymor's stunning re-imagining of the popular Disney animated film is back in the Triangle on tour, its magical charm firmly intact.
The show's wonders are now well-established: clever animal costumes that consciously reveal the actors within them, amusing miniature and shadow puppetry, vivid scenic evocations of sunrises and savannahs. Taymor's costume designs are particularly noteworthy for their use of leather, straw, feathers, bamboo and other natural elements, and her sculpted masks that sit atop the actors' heads allow both the mythic and the human sides of the story to be told.
The show is constantly surprising in its storytelling methods, based on African traditions of drumming, chants and rituals. The show takes the audience into a mind-expanding world where dancers with swaying straw skirts and headdresses of foliage become grasslands, and cloud shapes manipulated on long sticks suddenly merge into a giant lion mask.
