Watched Lion King this afternoon! With Connor and Jiaxin. :)

It was nice, but to be honest, not a very totally-blown-away kind of experience.

Maybe it was coz we were on the second floor; the stage seemed kinda small from there, but at the same time, it was nice to have a more elevated view of the whole thing. You win some, you lose some. Some things might not have been very visible from the first floor, such as the effect of the water "drying up" in the beginning of the second act. It was very cleverly done; a circular blue cloth with polka dot patterns laid out in the middle of the stage, and the cloth is slowly pulled down a little hole right in the centre.

Scar's acting was awesome; as Jiaxin put it, he *is* terribly "diva", but his characterisation of Scar is so spot on. He was probably the most enjoyable character to watch.

The two children playing Young Simba and Nala; their speaking voices are a little grating, because they're rather high-pitched - can't be helped, they *are* kids, after all. But their singing voices are another thing entirely; they both project really well!

Adult Nala's voice is amazing; personally, I thought that her voice was the best in the whole show. Adult Simba, for being the main protagonist in the whole story, unfortunately doesn't have as powerful a voice. He has a nice enough voice, but it somehow doesn't have the support and substance that Nala's does, and so I never really felt anything during Simba's solos.

The most credit probably has to go to sets and costumes design. The sets are not immensely elaborate, but they do make full use of all the space on the stage, and little things are always popping up in places where you least expect them: steam shooting out of barely visible little holes, inflatable "plants", and a portion of the upstage area which can be elevated in part or in whole.

And the costumes; I love how they've made the costumes and the puppets meld with the human counterparts who have to work them, and Scar and Mufasa's headgear pieces in particular are amazing. In the scene where we first meet Scar, he makes this snide little motion with his head (so it's quite obvious that he's not really all as sorry as he claims to be for missing Simba's presentation), and the headpiece that he's wearing mimics that sideways motion perfectly.

Finally, there are the localised jokes, mostly courtesy of Timon, and some from Zazu. At the end of the scene where Simba and Nala try to lose Zazu so that they can go to the elephant graveyard, Zazu gets up and walks (flies) into the stage left proscenium (there's the accompanying "tonk" sound effect as well :D), and then he goes: "...Nimba..? Sala...? ...Oh look... it's a merlion," before weaving around and exiting stage left.

And for an African meerkat, Timon speaks Chinese pretty well too. At the point where Simba tries to get him to jump over the river, Timon starts doing these exaggerated "warming-up" motions like jumping jacks and jogging on the spot, and then he starts talking - I didn't realise he was speaking in Chinese until I heard the ending part of the line: " 掌声鼓励鼓励！"

Timon even says, "Let it go lah," at some point (I can't remember when, except that it was pretty late in the show) and when the party returns to the Pridelands with Simba, Timon asks:
"This is what we're fighting for?"
Simba: Yes, this is my home.
Timon: Whoa. Talk about needing an HDB upgrade.

The locals in the audience laughed their asses off, but the two families of foreigners with us on the second floor seemed rather lost. Oh well. :D

All in all, an enjoyable performance! Now I'm just waiting to go back there to see Wicked in December. :D