The Lion King Puts the Puppeteers Onstage With the Animals
Two and a half hours at the Minskoff where the masks ride above the actors' faces and the control rods stay in plain view.
Julie Taymor conceived and directed this production and co-designed its masks and puppets with Michael Curry. Their central decision shows up in the first minute. The mask usually rides above the actor's face. Mufasa's mane sits on a frame at the crown of the head and tips forward when he lowers his chin.
You watch the lion and the person in the same moment, and the show spends no effort hiding the second one. A cheetah walks on rods held at arm's length. Gazelles run on a wheel a single dancer carries across the stage. The giraffes in "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" are the tallest animals onstage, and the stilts are right there under them.
Seats on this listing are assigned by the theatre when you book, and the row lands on the ticket itself. Price moves with the date and the section. Taxes, fees, and handling are already inside the number you see.
The Lion King On Broadway TicketMinskoff Theatre · Best available seating · Taxes and fees includedwww.viator.comThe Cheetah Runs on Rods Held at Arm's Length
Taymor shares the mask and puppet credit with Michael Curry, who works from a Portland, Oregon shop that still supports the production. Disney counts more than 232 puppets in the show, across rod, shadow, and full-sized figures, and puts the build time at 37,000 hours.
The range is what carries the evening. Zazu flies on a rod. The gazelles ride a rotating wheel one performer walks across the stage. Scar's mask sits forward of the actor's own face on a curved armature. It weighs nine ounces. Mufasa's weighs eleven.
The 1998 Tony Awards followed the craft. Taymor won Best Direction of a Musical and Best Costume Design, the first woman in theatrical history to take that directing award. Garth Fagan won for choreography, and Richard Hudson won for the set.
The Entrance Sits Off the Arcade on West 45th
The Minskoff stands at 200 West 45th Street, and the auditorium is upstairs. You come in through the street-level arcade and ride escalators up to the lobby. An elevator exists, with limited access.
The performance runs about two hours and thirty minutes, including one 15-minute intermission. Arriving 30 minutes early is the standing recommendation, and the reason goes past the queue. The audio-description pre-show notes, which walk through the scenery and the characters in detail, play on a loop through that last half hour.
The largest puppets do not stay onstage. During the opening number the elephant comes down one orchestra aisle and the rhino down the other. Aisle seats in the orchestra put you beside them as they pass. That elephant is 13 feet long and nine feet wide, with four performers working inside it. Ticket-holders seated upstairs describe bird puppets coming into the mezzanine instead.
The house is air-conditioned year round. A light layer helps. There is no dress code. Food and drink are sold inside, and outside food stays outside.
Lebo M. Built the Vocal Score and Leads the Choir
Elton John and Tim Rice wrote the songs most people arrive humming. The stage version reaches well past them, and Lebo M. carries three of its credits: additional music and lyrics, the vocal score, and choral direction. He was a teenage singer in Soweto before any of it.
Mark Mancina produced the stage music and co-wrote "He Lives in You" and "Shadowland", both of which came off the Rhythm of the Pride Lands album before they reached the theatre. Hans Zimmer and Jay Rifkin carry song credits too, and David Metzger orchestrated.
Six indigenous African languages are sung and spoken across the evening: Swahili, Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Tswana, and Congolese.
What the House Hands You at the Door
Disney's own line is that the show is intended for guests 6 and up, and that every guest needs a ticket regardless of age. Children under two are not admitted. Nothing in the staging is softened for small children. Theatrical smoke, fog effects, flashing lights, and loud noises all run during the performance, and the story turns on one character killing another.
Headsets for sound augmentation, closed-caption displays, and English audio description come from an usher or the house manager at no charge, with a valid photo ID held as a deposit. T-Coil loops are in place for hearing aids. Word-for-word subtitles run in eight languages through the GalaPro app on your own phone: Mandarin, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish, with English closed captions alongside them. Download the app before you arrive, then set the phone to airplane mode and join the theatre's GalaPro network at your seat. Disney notes that a service fee may apply. Plot commentary in English, Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese runs on separate Audien handsets, collected from the kiosk in the main lobby.
Wheelchair and companion seating sits at the rear of the orchestra, and those are the only locations in the house that involve no steps. Accessible restrooms are on the orchestra and mezzanine levels, reached by a lobby elevator reserved for guests with disabilities. Guide dogs and service animals are welcome. Open-captioned and sensory-friendly performances run once a year with the Theatre Development Fund, and ASL-interpreted dates are scheduled separately.
Tickets on this listing arrive by email as a link, and the seller notes delivery can land as late as two weeks before the performance. Open the link, save the ticket to your phone's wallet, and tap in at the door. Each barcode scans once. Every person in the party needs their own ticket on their own screen. The Minskoff box office runs Monday through Saturday from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM and Sunday from 11:00 AM to 6:30 PM for anything the email does not solve.
Sales are final here, and any exchange runs through whoever sold the ticket. Latecomers are seated at the house manager's discretion, usually at a pause in the score.
You come out onto West 45th with the block still lit, and Hell's Kitchen and its late kitchens start two avenues west.