The Lion King

In getting away from posting about things I hate, I"ll write about something I love, The Lion King. Disney first made this movie when I was a child and I was in love. I even had a Lion king birthday cake from BJ's one year, complete with a plastic Simba and Nala. Then, The Lion King opened on Broadway and I was sad to miss out when the drama club saw it as part of the NYC trip I didn't participate in my freshman year (you better believe I went each of the next 3 years). Finally, while studying abroad in London, I saw the Lion King musical - the day before I left. After all those years, it did not disappoint. To top it off, we got amazing orchestra seats at a great price with our student IDs. I left the theater and later the country happy with my Lion King experience.

This summer, for a birthday present, P's parents bought us tickets to see the Lion King in Hamburg. I had recently learned from friends who went that the Hamburg theater is on an island and you need to take a boat to get to it. We went to the show a couple of weeks ago.While, that's not completely geographically correct, the boat part was right. For the first time, I was going to see a musical in German and one I had already seen. I was worried I would not understand and it would disappoint. Once again, the Lion King did not let me down. The boat to the theater, while short, really added to the experience - once you got on there was no going back. The theater itself was nice and our seats were right on the aisle which meant we got a close up view of many of the animals as they entered. As for the German, it was hard to understand, many of the actors were not native speakers and had strong accents which could be attributed to that or to their characters. The songs seemed off with German words but it was still a lot of fun. I could understand a good bit of the show and what I didn't get in language I filled in with my knowledge of the story. It was a really great evening!