"Their original take on this is from the woman's point-of-view, which is rather different from the experiences of reading the book or seeing the movie, because she created this story from Francesca Johnson's point of view, not Robert Kincaid's."
If one company has experience in adapting films to the stage, it's Disney — it hit pay dirt with The Lion King, but flopped with The Little Mermaid and Tarzan. The Hollywood behemoth has now turned to its 1992 animated film, Aladdin, as the source of a new stage show.
Creating flying carpets isn't too hard to do these days on Broadway, but making a blue genie who magically morphs into different shapes and sizes might prove a bit more difficult. On top of that, the character was voiced by Robin Williams.
Director Casey Nicholaw says the film only had four and a half songs — the stage version has been fleshed out with songs the original writers — Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman — wrote, but didn't make the movie. He says Disney has been very supportive of these, and other changes.
"It's their property, you know, so they're protective of it, in a good way," Nicholaw says with a laugh. "They're completely encouraging about taking it and making it theatrical, as opposed to, 'We just want to put the movie onstage.' You know? They're saying, 'let's make it theater-worthy.'"
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