Disney’s Aladdin is coming to Brisbane to spread some of the magic that has made it a stellar hit
Hiba Elchikhe is living the dream, which sounds like a cliche but also happens to be true. The 24-year-old British musical theatre star is Princess Jasmine in Disney’s Aladdin – The Musical, which will come to Brisbane’s QPAC in February after stellar seasons in Sydney and Melbourne.
“It is every little girl’s dream to be a Disney princess and I am currently living that dream,” Elchikhe said when we met over high tea at the Sofitel Melbourne the day after another glittering show. “This is a highlight for me. I grew up watching Aladdin and all the other Disney films, and I love playing this role. Jasmine is such a strong, powerful character, a princess who isn’t meek at all. As far as I know she’s the first princess to wear pants, literally.”
The young Londoner is excited to be coming north and has been to Brisbane twice already – once to scope out digs (she found somewhere to stay at inner-south Kangaroo Point and will be catching the CityCat to work), and once to spruik the show with fellow leads Ainsley Melham, 25, who plays Aladdin, and 36-year-old Broadway star Michael James Scott, who plays the Genie and tends to steal the show.
The three leads were here recently with president and producer of Disney Theatrical Productions worldwide, Thomas Schumacher, 59, who flew in from New York. Having a heavyweight such as Schumacher here to announce the Brisbane season demonstrates on the one hand how much Disney cares about the booming Australian theatrical market and, on the other, how much he personally cares about this musical. He has been involved since the film version in 1992, which featured music and songs by Alan Menken, Howard Ashman and Tim Rice. He oversaw its transformation into a hugely successful stage musical. “Everything aboutthe musical stands on the shoulders of the Academy Award-winning 1992 movie,” Schumacher says. “Then we had to figure out how to make a 75-minute movie into a stage show. And the thing is that some of the things written for the movie weren’t used. The beautiful song Proud of Your Boy was cut, but we had the chance with the stage show to put it back in.”
Schumacher acknowledges that the story of Aladdin is globally known and is “by no means exclusive to Disney”. “What is specific to Disney is the nature of the storytelling and, more specifically, the beloved song score to the original film,” he says. “It was really the music that launched the property, and that gave it definition, particularly the jazz quality of the Genie’s now legendary song, Friend Like Me.”
Schumacher points out that Disney has six companies of Aladdin playing around the world right now. The Australian production was built here with stunning sets, 360 costumes, 160 different pairs of shoes and over half a million Swarovski crystals that make it a dazzling spectacle, with magic carpet rides adding more wow factor.
The story itself is one of the tales in One Thousand and One Nights, stories of Sinbad, Ali Baba and Aladdin, one of the best known. It wasn’t part of the original Arabic text but was added in the 18th century by Frenchman Antoine Galland. In the earliest versions of the tale, Aladdin is a poor youth living on the streets of a city in China rather than Arabia, although the rest of the story suggests a Persian or Arabian setting complete with a Sultan and people who are obviously Muslims. In retelling the story, film versions such as The Thief of Baghdad (1924) and Disney’s animated hit Aladdin in 1992 (which had two sequels) fixed it as Arabian.
This production, set in the mythical city of Agrabah, looked to places such as Morocco for design inspiration and set designer Bob Crowley spent a lot of time looking at Moroccan and Middle Eastern tiles, rugs, textiles and architecture, with exotic results.
Broadway director Casey Nicholaw, who took the show from the screen to the page and then to the Broadway stage, came to Australia early in the piece to work with the Australian cast. Disney was apparently thrilled to find the perfect Aladdin in fresh-faced Ainsley Melham, who is brilliant in the role and everything Aladdin should be. Melham already had an army of younger fans too since he was with the children’s group Hi-5 for three years before this show, touring Australia and abroad. “That was huge fun and a learning curve,” Melham says over tea and scones. “It was like theatrical boot camp and it set me up for this show.”
Melham, from Bathurst in NSW, trained at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), the star factory that produced Hugh Jackman, Frances O’Connor, Lisa McCune and many others. He says working with the American creative team behind Aladdin early in the piece was great.
“They had thoroughly researched the show, and were really well informed about the culture they were drawing from. We had some wonderful chats and we all read the stories from One Thousand and One Nights. These are known worldwide and have their own versions in different cultures. It gives you a broader context as an actor.”
Melham says that to have a starring role at his age is fantastic and that the show “still feels wonderful every night”. In case you’ve forgotten the story, Aladdin is a street urchin who lives in Agrabah with his faithful monkey friend Abu. Aladdin is poor and has to steal to survive. Princess Jasmine, meanwhile, has it all but feels trapped in the palace and sneaks out to the marketplace where she accidentally meets Aladdin. Aladdin helps the princess out of trouble, and they fall in love.
But under the orders of the evil Jafar (the appropriately sinister Adam Murphy), Aladdin is thrown in jail and becomes caught up in Jafar’s plot to rule the land with the aid of a mysterious lamp. Legend has it that only a person who is a “diamond in the rough”, like Aladdin, can retrieve the lamp from the Cave of Wonders. Aladdin seems to be the one, and once he gets hold of the lamp he gets three wishes from the Genie and Aladdin uses one of them to pretend to be a prince so he can woo Princess Jasmine.
As the Genie, American actor and singer Michael James Scott is brilliant, a one-man party on stage. He sings, he dances, he jokes, he tugs at the heart strings … the Broadway star does it all and says he was not daunted by the fact that the late, great Robin Williams was the Genie in the Disney film.
“His genius and mastery made the role iconic but this is our version and I do my own thing,” Scott says. “I never felt any pressure to be like Robin Williams but his essence is still there in the role, which has all sorts of different music and inspirations. The creative team went for the Fats Waller, Cab Calloway jazz feel with the music, and that’s a really cool thing. I’m such a song and dance man … I love that. It’s old school.”
Scott is a dynamo up there but also a skilled actor who looks at the deeper themes of his role. “When Aladdin asks him what he wants, the first thing he says is … freedom,” Scott observes. “As joyous and alive as he is, he is also trapped and is doing things for everyone else, granting wishes for others. For Aladdin to turn the tables and ask him what he wants is interesting, and that makes me think.”
But if you just want to enjoy the spectacle, without too much introspection, that’s OK too, he says. The Genie is the character who gets to talk to the audience directly at the beginning of the show and he has a few jokes with an Aussie flavour prepared for his Queensland audience, in particular a sight gag with a prop we all recognise. But we won’t spoil it for you.
We can tell you without really ruining things that the show does have a happy ending. It’s a Disney production, after all. That’s how they roll and we love them for it.
Disney’s Aladdin – The Musical, Lyric Theatre, QPAC, from February 25, tickets from $60; qpac.com.au