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NEW YORK -- Orthopedists and chiropractors, take note: A golden career opportunity may have just arrived on Broadway.
In the new stage adaptation of Disney's animated film Tarzan (*** out of four), agile young performers leap, flip and careen through stunts so relentlessly that you could get back pains just watching. Not infrequently, they accomplish these tasks while suspended from wires, adding to their difficulty.
In truth, I'm sure Disney already has the cast and its various body parts well covered. Certainly, the House of Mickey Mouse did not stint on other aspects of this production, which opened Wednesday at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. From Bob Crowley's lush, fanciful scenic and costume design to its intricate uses of animation and projected images, Tarzan offers plenty of the flash considered catnip for tourists and casual fans.
Here, though, it's not empty flash. Not since I saw Elton John's Billy Elliot in London last year have I been as impressed with the uncynical warmth and charm of a kid-friendly musical. Like Elliot, Tarzan has a score by a British pop star, Phil Collins, who reintroduces his adult-contemporary hit You'll Be in My Heart and a few other tunes he wrote for Disney's Tarzan soundtrack. Most songs are new and blend mildly agreeable melodies and Afrocentric rhythms with the odd nod to Gilbert and Sullivan.
But it's David Henry Hwang's sprightly libretto that makes this Tarzan fly. Hwang, whose credits range from Disney's Aida to the Tony Award-winning drama M. Butterfly, contributes a script with a light but full heart, one that aims to amuse and enlighten children without patronizing them, or us.
Hwang slips in sly references to grown-up boys and girls liking each other, particularly after Tarzan's Jane arrives in the jungle and spots her all-too-human hunk. But Tarzan ultimately promotes a broader sense of love and understanding, the kind that binds families together and unites people -- and other primates, in this case -- who would seem to have little in common.
The apes who take Tarzan in are winningly played by the warm-voiced Merle Dandridge and Shuler Hensley, whose skulking tribe leader reminded me at times of Rip Torn on The Larry Sanders Show.
In the title role, Josh Strickland gives an energetic and no doubt exhausting performance, and manages a goofy chemistry with Jenn Gambatese's veddy British Jane.
Watching these mammals cavort, I found myself thinking of a more highbrow show that hit Broadway recently, The Drowsy Chaperone, which takes a swipe at Disney while lamenting the sorry state of musical theater.
Tarzan is no more a major new musical than Chaperone is. But I'll take the former's good-natured exuberance over the latter's preening irony any day of the week.
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