Review: The Lion King Musical at Mayflower Theatre

Two years, eleven months and six days after booking these tickets, my family and I finally stepped onto the theatrical African Pridelands to see The Lion King Musical at the Mayflower Theatre in Southampton.

The show is based on the 1995 Disney film and has been running in the Lyceum Theatre in London since 1999. This autumn and winter the show is on a UK tour and is currently doing dates at the Mayflower Theatre in Southampton from 8^th September to 15^th October 2022 and the Palace Theatre in Manchester from 27^th October 2022 to 19^th February 2023.

The show requires 50 cast members plus an additional 100 people backstage to make each performance happen.

There are more than 232 puppets in the show, including rod puppets, shadow puppets and full-sized puppets.

My family and I attended on Tuesday 20^th September 2022, which included live audio description and a touch tour for blind and visually impaired audiences.

Review: The Lion King Musical

The Lion King Musical has been on my bucket list of theatre shows to see for years. When I saw it was coming to Southampton, I had to book tickets. Thanks to Covid, it was an extremely long time until we got to see the show, but it was definitely worth the wait.

My first surprise was finding out the bamboo Rafiki was played by a woman but it worked remarkably well and her vocals were phenomenal.

During the opening scene, in which Rafiki sang the iconic The Circle of Life, more than 30 animals and scenery congregated on the stage including giraffes, monkeys, zebras, antelopes, birds, elephants and, of course, lions. Many of them walked down the aisles reacting with the audience as they went. Some of the animals are monouvered by tall stilts and wearing specialist-designed headwear.

The story is pretty much the same as the original film. It starts with lion cub Simba learning about the animal kingdom and then being tricked by his uncle Scar into thinking he killed his father Mufasa in a stampede. Simba flees the Prideland and starts a new life in the jungle with Timone and Pumba before returning to Prideland as an adult lion to defeat Scar.

As well as The Circle of Life, the show had all the other songs we know and love including I Just Can’t Wait To Be King, Hakuna Matata, Can You Feel The Love Tonight, Be Prepared and He Lives In You.

But there were also several original songs for the performance including The Morning Report, The Lioness Hunt, One By One, The Madness of King Scar, Shadowland and Endless Night.

Every song fitted well with the tone of the scene and sounded powerful, emotional, joyful and spine-tingling throughout.

The stage choreography and stunt sequences were incredible too, especially when the lionesses were hunting and Simba and Scars battle at the end. I couldn’t make it out clearly due to my poor vision, but I could see bodies moving in rhythmic, acrobatic styles.

I did feel sorry for the actor playing Scar because at the end when he was meant to fall and be eaten by the hyenas, we think his harness got stuck as he fell, meaning they had to pause the show for a couple of minutes to resolve it. Hopefully, he wasn’t injured.

I loved the comedy in the script and how they featured a few relevant and modern references. For instance, I can’t remember the exact scene but I think it was Zazu threatening to leave and he mentioned going back to Portsmouth, in reference to the fact Southampton and Portsmouth are rival cities/sports teams.

Also, when Zazu became Scar’s servant and he was ordered to sing, the hornbill sang Let It Go from Frozen.

I also want to mention that every time I heard the word “lioness”, my first thought kept being the women’s England football team (which is their team nickname) – you can tell I have been watching too much football this summer!

The closing scene was breathtaking with all the animals reunited on Pride rock and blasting out The Circle of Life one more time. There was a bit of anticipation as to whether we’d see Simba and Nala with their cub but right at the end she appeared.

The Lion King Musical is a spectacular show and fun for the kids and the child in you. If you’re a fan of Disney and the animal kingdom, then this is the perfect show for you.

Accessibility review: audio description and touch tour

As I mentioned above, I attended the show that included live audio description and a touch tour for audience members who are blind or visually impaired.

Before the show, we went to a room upstairs where we got to meet the person doing the audio description and a couple of crew members to find out more about the show and touch some of the masks and costumes.

We got to touch Simba’s mask and a lioness mask. I was amazed at how big they are and how they attach to the actor like a bike helmet. We also got to touch Pumba’s head, a giraffe’s head, Rafiki’s costume and some of the costumes of the greenland scenery, which included a large and heavy grass headdress.

I loved how much detail there was on all the different masks and costumes. You could feel fur lines, whiskers and facial features on the lion masks. Simba’s mask even had a red mane that you could stroke your fingers through. You could even feel the pattern down the giraffe’s neck, which also had hair down the middle.

For Rafiki, she had a hat, feather-like dress and circular rope, which I later discovered was her bottom. So, I can officially say “I touched Rafiki’s butt”.

The audio description (AD) was performed by Charles Wiltshire, a volunteer at the Audio Description Association (ADA). We were given a headset that was almost like an upside-down microphone. The two earpieces looked like mics.

In the first quarter of the show, I had no problem with the audio description but then I kept getting a continuous beep and it kept cutting out. Fortunately, I knew The Lion King story well so I got the gist of what was happening on stage.

However, it was still irritating. So, at the interval, I sent mum to the front desk to try to fix or exchange the headset. They changed the batteries and the beeping stopped. I later discovered the reason it was cutting out was the headset had to remain open to hear it. So, if it cut out again, I simply moved the arm pieces on the headset apart.

Also, I needed the headset on a high volume to hear the descriptions over the stage music. But I found when there were quiet scenes with dialogue, the static sound drowned it out. By the second act though, I found a trick of closing the headset nearer to my head when there was dialogue then open again to hear the AD.

Overall, Charles did a great job of the audio description, especially describing all the animals in the ensemble pieces. However, I do have a couple of minor criticisms.

Firstly, I think he was pronouncing a few of the character names wrong. It sounded like he was saying “Zimba” and “Mufaza” instead of Simba and Mufasa. Also, he pronounced Timone “Tie-mon” instead of “Tee-moan”.

Secondly, I felt there were times Charles kept telling us who was speaking on stage when there was no need to as we knew by the character’s voice. I understood doing that at the beginning when we were getting to know the characters but once the show was in full swing, I felt there was no need to tell us who was speaking every time.

Despite that, I’m truly thankful for having access to audio description and I strongly believe all theatre shows, TV programmes and films should have it available. Please sign my petition to raise awareness of the importance of audio description for the blind community.

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