ABT & Tarzan

I know I’ve already raved about our nearby theatrical venue, The Arizona Broadway Theatre, but I have to do it again. Last night we saw Tarzan, the Stage Musical with music by Phil Collins. Simply stunning. This is ABT’s seventh season, and they just keep getting better and better, more and more professional. I can’t begin to understand how a small dinner theater like ABT could present such complicated staging and costumes, such professional choreography, such great voices as we saw in this production. I wasn’t sure what to expect about a show based on one of my favorite fictional characters. As a boy, I cut my teeth on everything Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote. And now they’ve done a musical version? How can that be? Well, they’ve done it and it can be very well indeed. The set throughout was interesting and effective, with back-lit vines behind stone walls and cliffs depicting the jungle and the apes’ home territory. But to open the second act, the band of apes appeared at the rear of the theater, interacting with the audience as they moved down to the stage. They were followed by eleven costumed characters portraying all the jungle beauty that Jane had discovered—two huge butterflies that hovered above the action on the stage, four red plumed flowers, four multi-colored birds, and a giant spider, all dancing around Jane. And while that was taking place on stage, a female in a bodysuit entered from the rear, then climbed a white silk scarf that had been lowered from the ceiling above the dining area, giving us our own little version of a Cirque du Soleil acrobatic spin. Then there was also the difficulty of all the flying entrances and flights above the stage itself. The full-grown Tarzan enters from the back of the theater, riding a wire from the rear and over the heads of the diners to the stage. All of it was theatrically exciting and fun for both adults as well as the children in attendance. Take a look at the short video to see some of the highlights of the show.