TLKoB - Dayton, OH

[kumarileopard]

Wow...It's been a while since I've been on here. Nothing has really happened but I just forget to check in once in a while. I was going to put this in the original thread I posted but it's hit the inactive timeout and locked so I'll make a new one.

Well, I went to see The Lion King in Dayton on Saturday afternoon and Here's a synopsis of the changes/edits they've made (at least the things I remember were different):

The show clocks in at just over 2 hours and 6 minutes long (I think it was closer to 3 before) and it runs 60 minutes for Act 1 and 66 minutes for Act 2 with a 20 minute intermission. The most noticeable cut is "Morning Report" is cut from Act 1 (Everyone knows about that already) and they cut out about 30 seconds from "Chow Down". If you have the soundtrack at the point in the song where Banzai says "Hey! Did we order this dinner to go?!" is gone up to "I think we should begin this meal from scratch...". As far as I could tell or remember I don't think any of the dialog was cut.

The only cut I noticed in Act 2 was the instrumental interlude in "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" before the reprise of the chorus was gone. If I remember the length of it varied a bit from show to show but it usually ended when the actors hit their marks for the reprise of the chorus.

Tony Freeman joined the touring cast as Zazu/us Scar from the NY cast and he did a fantastic job. J. Anthony Crane knocked Scar out of the park on this one as well.

Some of the orchestra has been replaced with keyboards (there's 3 keyboard players listed in the program). It's probably due to ease of setup and control. The Schuster Center has excellent acoustics and even though I was sitting in the second row from the top of the Upper Balcony you could see and hear everything very well.