Disney's Aladdin on stage still carries the Menken magic

The 1992 animated musical was the brainchild of the award-winning composer and is now touring with Broadway Across Canada

Published Jul 06, 2023 • 3 minute read

Adi Roy plays Aladdin in the North American Tour of Aladdin. Photo by Deen van Meer /Supplied

There’s definitely magic in the genie’s lamp that brought Aladdin to life in Disney studios 31 years ago.

The animated musical about a street urchin who transforms himself into a prince with the help of a genie became the highest-grossing film of 1992 and an even greater success in its DVD and TV releases. It was turned into a lavish theatrical musical opening in Seattle in 2011 and on Broadway three years later, and eventually became a live-action film in 2019 directed by Guy Ritchie.

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Disney’s Aladdin is still playing on Broadway, and in Japan, with plans for a new production in Australia, and a major U.K. tour later this year. The Broadway Across Canada tour that plays the Jubilee Auditorium in Edmonton July 11-16 is the show’s second major North American tour.

The original Aladdin is the fourth film in what’s known as the Disney Animation Renaissance that began with The Little Mermaid, The Rescuers Down Under and Beauty and the Beast. Like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin was the brainchild of lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken. Ashman died while working on Aladdin and Tim Rice joined Menken to complete the film.

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Anand Nagraj Jafar and Aaron Choi Iago in Broadway Across Canada’s production of Aladdin. Photo by Deen van Meer /Supplied

“It was Howard who pitched the idea of Aladdin to Disney while we were working on The Little Mermaid in the mid-1980s. Howard was an amazing, brilliant talent. He could always find a smart way to tell a story and he was always so inventive. When I lost Howard, I had to find someone to fill those enormous shoes, and that was Tim Rice who was working on The Lion King for Disney at the time,” says Menken, whose first collaboration with Ashman was on the Broadway musical version of Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. They would go on to collaborate on the 1982 off-Broadway musical, The Little Shop of Horrors which still holds the honour of being the highest-grossing off-Broadway musical of all time.

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Award-winning composer Alan Menken co-wrote A Whole New World from Aladdin, which won the Grammy for best song. Photo by Shervin Lainez /Supplied

“Mr. Rosewater cracked open the door for Howard and I. Little Shop of Horrors kicked it all the way open. We were definitely at the right place at the right time with the right people, because David Geffen and Cameron Mackintosh produced Little Shop, and they knew Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was brought on to Disney to revive its motion picture division. And they all liked what we’d done with Little Shop,” explains Menken. “It was Howard’s dream to create animated films that were really mini-musicals. It was this concept that turned things around for Disney. It would help turn them into the most successful studio in Hollywood and eventually into one of the most successful theatrical producers in America.”

Menken recalls Ashman’s original treatment for Aladdin “was more of a romance, but it would eventually evolve into a buddy story, which I think explains why it has remained so popular. With that change, we lost a number of songs Howard and I had written, but they were resurrected for the stage version.”

The Disney musical Aladdin opens next week at the Jubilee Auditorium. Photo by Deen van Meer /Supplied

A Whole New World, the song Menken wrote with Rice, won the Oscar, Golden Globe and Grammy for best song, and would become the only song from a Disney film to win the Grammy for song of the year.

After Ashman’s death, Menken would collaborate with the leading lyricists in America including David Zippel (Hercules), Stephen Schwartz (Pocahontas), Jack Feldman (Newsies) and Glen Slater (Sister Act). He is currently working on a Nancy Drew musical with Nell Benjamin, who wrote Legally Blonde The Musical, and on a revised stage version of Hercules, which he adapted with Zippel for a limited run at the outdoor Shakespeare Festival in New York. There is also a new version of The Hunchback, which he wrote with Stephen Schwartz, that is opening in Vienna.

Menken sees himself as “an architect who designs the house for other people to live in. I only become involved in new productions of my musicals if the producers want to make changes. My musicals are like children. You have to let them go once you’ve nurtured them.”

For Menken, it’s a wonderful irony that he’s become a legendary Disney artist because “seeing Disney’s Fantasia galvanized my view of what is possible with music. I am a child of the classic rock period who learned to marry theatrical and pop styles.”