Like the Pantages, But Not at All

One of the first things we did at camp, by which I mean within 30 minutes of picking up the kids in Jo'burg, was go and see the Lion King. I don't mean we rented the movie and popped some popcorn -- or even projected it onto a convenient wall after dark. I mean 1800 children, their families, the camp counselors and directors, and four extremely happy Peace Corps Volunteers went to a local performing arts center where Disney had essentially donated the entire 1pm matinee of the South African production of the Lion King musical to Global Camps. This was not what I expected when I signed up for camp, but boy was I happy about it.
I'd seen the Lion King before, years ago in LA (for somebody's birthday, as I recall), and I'd remembered it being pretty awesome. So-so music (especially the weird fillers not written by Elton John) but AMAZING costumes. The Lion King is all about the visuals, the unbelievable puppets and characters and scenes that the artists have created. Thats what I remembered. Of course, the major difference between when I saw it with Tess and when I saw it two weeks ago were the 1800 children from Soweto who had never seen anything like this before in their lives. That and the fact that we were seeing it actually in Africa gave it an incredible depth. Here they tweak the languages of the songs quite a bit, which is fun. A lot of the original music was written in Swahili -- the parts that weren't in English, of course. Here they've instead switched a lot of the Swahili for Zulu, and also managed to fit in I believe all 11 official language plus Khoisan, a language which consists almost entirely of clicks and whistles which very few people speak anymore. The kids loved it.
In fact, the kids loved all of it, and while getting to see the Lion King was a wonderful experience on its own, getting to see the Lion King with all those kids is probably going to be my hands down best musical theater-esque experience ever. They were literally leaning forward on the edge of their seats, applauding, laughing, pointing, yelling, clapping and occasionally even singing along. (Hakuna Matata, especially, was a hit. Though according to the little girl next to me who apparently did in fact speak Swahili: "It means no problems not no worries." How can I not love seeing the Lion King in Africa?) When the performers came out for the final curtain call, the kids went wild screaming and applauding for all their favorites -- all except for the man who played Scar, who got perhaps the longest and loudest "Boooo!" I've ever heard. The poor guy. Once I stopped laughing I felt a little bad for him.