Marcus M. Martin as the Genie, Disney’s Aladdin, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Deen van Meer

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

“Come for the hummus, stay for the floor show,” advises the outsized sprite in Arabian Nights, the opening number of Disney’s Aladdin. He pretty much nails the touring Broadway family musical that’s arrived at the Jube with a sultan’s ransom in razzle-dazzle, sequins, and bling, ba-da-boom one-liners, and manic showmanship.

Welcome to Agrabah, where “enchantment runs rampant,” where “even the poor people look fabulous…. And everyone has a minor in dance.”

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That stage — to start with designer Bob Crowley’s fantasy frames, grillwork cut-out screens, lanterns, pyramids — is a vision of delight, faux Turkish Delight. It’s so saturated with colours and light it positively glows. Lighting is by the great Natasha Katz, who knows everything about the way light hits sequins, fake scimitars, and gleaming dentition. The cast, in sparkly harem pants, turbans, baubles, feathers, draped in floaty scarves (costumes by Gregg Barnes), glows too.

Call it Casbah kitsch if you will. But this splashy, good-natured, relentlessly fun production directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw (The Book of Mormon, The Drowsy Chaperone, Some Like It Hot) is on a scale of keep-it-comin’ that sheds the kitsch label like leg warmers off a showgirl. Nothing succeeds like excess, as Oscar Wilde says; I’m going with that. Finally, tap dance comes to its own in the Middle East, along with the tabbouleh pun.

Adi Roy as Aladdin in Disney’s Aladdin, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Deen van Meer.

OK, there is a boy-meets-girl story, young love across the tracks, in all this, as you already know from the 1992 Disney animation that (in Disney corporate tradition) inspired it . The musical is work of Disney’s go-to composer Alan Menken with lyrics by the late Howard Ashman (supplemented by Tim Rice) and a book by Chad Beguelin. The boy in question is Aladdin (Adi Roy), a buff young street thief with charm, a million dollar smile and no shirt. The plucky Disney girl is Princess Jasmine (Senzel Ahmady), thwarted by her dad the Sultan (Dwelvan David on opening night), who’s set on finding her a suitable husband. She’s got an independent streak and wants to pick her own mate and see the world. Yes, she feels imprisoned, by parental authority and tradition and all that, but as one of her handmaidens says “this is a really really really nice prison.”

Anyhow the princess and the pauper meet by chance at the bazaar where she’s temporarily gone AWOL in disguise from the palace. Their eyes meet…. Anyhow, you know how that goes. It’s the plot, it’s conventional, and I’m just going to leave that with you.

Which brings us to the main event: the Genie. He has employment issues, having spent the last 6,000 years trapped in a lamp. “It’s demeaning, but there you are….” And in the performance by Marcus M. Martin, the Genie is a dazzling and charismatic figure who sings, dances, talks a mile a minute, and is, in effect, the spirit of showbiz — from the vintage Cab Calloway variety through the Catskills and Vegas to the Golden Age of Hollywood.

And his spirit infuses a whole series of big, extravagantly playful, production numbers, stuffed with allusions to everything from Hello Dolly! to West Side Story. And the Act I finale, Friend Like Me, is a show-stopper. The Genie emerges from the lamp singing and dancing (the guy knows how to make an entrance), summoned when Aladdin rubs it, in a cave that so gold-encrusted it makes the Phantom’s boudoir look positively Scandinavian minimalist. As the villain’s assistant says, the Golden Rule is “whoever has the gold makes the rules.”

The Genie leads a gloriously frantic, mismatched, nonstop succession of showbiz-y bits inventively choreographed by Nicholaw, including a whiff of Western, a chorus line with scimitars instead of canes, a big gold-clad tap finish. “Do I look bigger to you?” he asks Aladdin, patting his ample girth. “I know, ‘don’t eat the poutine’.”

Another highlight is High Adventure, in which Aladdin’s trio of pals (Jake Letts, Ben Chavez, and Colt Prattes) attempt to rescue the hero from the Sultan’s dungeon. Their riotous performances, expertly individualized, are Marx-ist, in the Groucho sense, and fun throughout.   

There’s nothing in the Aladdin handbook about when to say when. My cavil with this basic principle is the sound of this touring production, which is so bright, forward, and tinny, at least at first, that you can scarcely hear the lyrics. It’s a shame since they’re shameless, crammed with witty rhymed anachronisms. And it takes some concentration at times to hear which character is speaking, from where.

The lead performances are outsized. This, after all, is a show where the villain, the Sultan’s vizier Jafar (Anand Nagraj), says “I feel an evil laugh coming on….” Even so, your interest in Jafar’s assistant Iago (Aaron Choi), a clown with a voice that could boil the fat off a Broadway producer, who specializes in mugging, could wane, as mine did, especially if you’re getting bling fatigue by Act II.   

The young lovers-to-be, played by Roy and Ahmady, are a likeable and suitably dreamy pair, who are very at home in the pop idiom of Mencken’s songs. They relentlessly turn to face the audience with their smile wattage, but, hey, this is a show that lives to wink. And the ensemble are absolutely top-flight dancers; they have to be to make Nicholaw’s choreography seem easeful.

The real star of this savvy family-friendly show is the Genie, purveyor of the Arabian Dream. And you’ll leave possibly dazed but certainly smiling. When I left the Jube last night I didn’t notice a long silver streamer (courtesy of the show) tangled in my purse strap. The lady behind me inadvertently stepped on the end, and we ended up eyeball to eyeball. “Well, don’t you look sparkly,” she said. That’s what a dose of fun will do.

REVIEW

Disney’s Aladdin

Broadway Across Canada

Where: Jubilee Auditorium

Running: through Sunday

Tickets: ticketmaster.ca, edmonton.broadway.com