Thomas Schumacher had been spending a wonderful couple of days basking among the celebrity-heavy crowd at the smash London opening of “The Lion King,” the widely acclaimed and immensely profitable spectacular that represented the very brightest star in Walt Disney Theatricals’ small constellation of shows.
But even in the limo on his way back from Kennedy International Airport this late October day, Schumacher, the head of Walt Disney Theatricals, had to forget all about “The Lion King” and start thinking about the next project. The Chicago opening of composer Elton John and lyricist Tim Rice’s new musical of “Aida” was just a few weeks away. And Schumacher was being asked by a reporter if he felt any pressure.
Just for a moment, the customary reserve of this genial, media-savvy executive seemed to slip.
“I have just been sitting on a plane next to (chairman and CEO of the Walt Disney Company) Michael Eisner, flying over from London, for eight hours,” the typically smooth Schumacher said with a palpable splutter. “Pressure? Of course I feel pressure.”
It’s not hard to understand why he’s feeling some stress. With Chicago’s revamped Cadillac Palace Theatre as a splendiferous backdrop, this world-premiere engagement of the newly retooled “Aida” is without doubt the single most significant and closely watched event of the international theater season, never mind Chicago’s. And with “Aida,” three young performers — Heather Headley (Aida), Sherie Scott (Amneris), and Adam Pascal (Radames) — are poised on the edge of stardom.
Since this show, which began previews on Friday, plays here only through Jan. 9, there will be very little time to make changes before a Broadway opening already set for the Palace Theatre in New York on March 23. Critics are not being invited in Chicago until Dec. 9. But London and New York are anxiously waiting this respected theater city’s response to this colossal entertainment project.
This new rock musical — about a Nubian princess who’s forced into slavery and must share the man she loves with another woman — represents the work of star names. With music by John and lyrics by Rice, “Aida” has been generating media attention and close scrutiny for months. And although the first attempt at “Aida” took place a year ago in Atlanta, the show has been completely reconceived.
Even though the creative minds at Disney Theatricals have created such popular hits as the long-running “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Lion King,” the stakes are especially high this time. Although the name Walt Disney has come to imply crass populism to some, the company seems to be interested in the kind of sustained artistic success that cannot be described in terms of a bottom line.
Disney’s live version of “Beauty and the Beast” was seen by much of the theatrical establishment as an overblown cartoon. “The Lion King” brought artistic legitimacy, but was viewed by some as a fortuitous one-time deal dependent on director Julie Taymor’s extraordinary talents. For the young executives who run Disney Theatricals — two of whom cut their teeth working in Chicago theater — a hit with “Aida” would confirm stellar producing for the long haul.
So will “Aida,” a show with a long and troubled history, be their ticket to success?
In practical terms, the success or failure of “Aida” depends in large measure on the directorial work of Robert Falls. Even though he came to this long-established project late in the game, the moonlighting artistic director of Chicago’s Goodman Theatre is now the main creative force behind “Aida.”
Falls clearly has been given free reign: He’s picked most of the designers and other members of the creative team, rewritten the book (for which he now gets shared credit), brought in a script doctor and cast most of the actors.
Falls has a vaunted reputation in the non-profit community and the distinction of wooing Broadway last season with his Goodman production of “Death of a Salesman.” But he has never before worked on a full-blown Broadway musical, and success with “Aida” would doubtless catapult him to a level of international fame.
“I am having a great time,” said a typically exuberant Falls from New York a couple of days after Schumacher’s return. “And I cannot claim to be disturbed that a lot more people are going to see this show than have seen any of my other work.”
The history of “Aida” is quite complicated. The concept of the show has been kicked around by Schumacher and his colleagues since 1991, but it came to most people’s attention last fall, when the non-profit Alliance Theatre in Atlanta announced that it was joining with Disney to present the first full production of “Elaborate Lives: The Legend of Aida.” Robert Jess Roth was hired as director of a production thought to be headed straight to Broadway.
The Georgia opening in October 1998 did not go well. Not only did the set break down on opening night, causing at least one New York critic to have to cool his heels an additional night, but the critical reaction was largely negative. The book was widely attacked and the production style lampooned as overly glib and cartoonish.
Still, Rice, who has been around the business too long not to speak his mind, takes exception to the characterization that the first “Aida” crashed and burned.
“The received wisdom in theater lore is that Atlanta was a disaster,” says Rice. “It was probably wrong for Broadway, but the punters down there loved it. We got mixed reviews but it was by no means a train wreck. There was easily enough good to make everyone want to continue.”
“Look,” says Schumacher. “We did what we were supposed to do out of town. We tried out some ideas in front of a live audience . . . and we realized what we had to change.”
Much of the original cast and crew were fired. Headley, the original “Aida” was retained, as was Scott. From the original design team, lighting designer Natasha Katz also was asked to keep working on the project. But even though the score also survived largely intact, the producers quickly decided that they needed to start from scratch.
The show needed to take a turn for the serious and the right agent of that change was Falls. The veteran of the Off-Loop theater had worked in Chicago with Disney executives Peter Schneider (who employed him at the now defunct St. Nicholas Theatre) and Stuart Oken (who produced “Moonchildren,” Falls’ first Chicago show). All three are still friends.
Once Falls had signed up, he called up David Henry Hwang.
Falls told Hwang, the author of “M. Butterfly,” that the core of the “Aida” story involved the oppositional relationship of political responsibility and personal passion and the extent to which love can serve as a bridge in a world full of hate. Warming to his topic, he spoke with passion of gender and power issues and of giving the musical some depth.
“I would never have accepted the assignment if I had not felt that the mandate was real and serious,” Hwang says. “Disney was very supportive. I had the feeling they hired us because they wanted something with bite and depth.”
But where did that leave Linda Woolverton, the original writer?
“I backed off for a while because my take was that Bob Falls needed to have a fresh look at the project and feel some ownership,” she says. “I put so much of my heart and soul into this project — and asked my family to make so many sacrifices — that I really wanted it to go on living in its very best incarnation. I had to get my ego out of the way.”
So even though Falls and Hwang now share her book credit, Woolverton ultimately stayed with the project. “It may sound like the party line, but I really like the changes,” she says, “and it’s now become more of a collaboration.”
Falls’ designer of choice was Bob Crowley, the British scenic specialist widely acclaimed for his West End and Broadway revival of the musical “Carousel.” Falls and Crowley spent their first meeting wandering around the Egyptian holdings of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
“Egyptian culture has been kitschified and hijacked by Hollywood,” Crowley says, “and the piece comes with an awful lot of visual baggage. . . . So I’ve treated this play rather like an over-familiar play by Shakespeare. I’ve tried to go for the least obvious choices. And the design is deliberately anachronistic in place. This is, after all, not an opera by Verdi but a musical by Elton John.”
John, who declined interview requests, has not written a full-blown Broadway musical (although he contributed some songs to “The Lion King”). He’s also clearly too busy to fill the typical role of the nail-biting composer sitting in the back of the theater and banging out midnight re-writes.
Still, John was in Chicago during preview week. And Rice says that John has been tinkering with the score and meeting with Falls and the other collaborators between his international round of concerts. At least two of the musical numbers have been shifted in position, and one song, “Not Me,” that did not appear in Atlanta has been added.
“I’m so moved by Elton,” says Falls. “He’s done everything he can do in the pop world and he’s willing to move into uncharted territory without fear and with a full sense of excitement. He challenges himself and he wants to be scared. That’s an instinct I admire in all artists.”
Within the next month, that palpable collective fear will have turned to either disappointment or glory — or somewhere between the two. But regardless of the outcome of “Aida,” Chicago has the first look at a huge, full-blown musical presented with all creative guns blazing.
Even Rice, a maverick personality who claims to be “not much of a theater animal,” says he is recalling the excitement he felt when he worked on “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “Evita,” two Rice-Andrew Lloyd Webber shows that forever changed the face of musicals.
“All our problems with perceptions will not disappear until the show is open,” Rice says. “Then people forget them.”
So is “Aida” headed for burnished gold?
Rice, who’s been down this road before, pauses for a couple of moments.
“Until we’re off and running,” he says, “we’ll never know.”
