As part of my birthday presents I was lucky enough to receive tickets to Aladdin the Musical up in London. I was so excited as I had heard so many amazing things about it and also, lets be real here, its Disney, so it was bound to be magical! Aladdin in London is based up at the Prince Edwards Theatre, one that I had not been to before so everything was a bit of a new experience for me!
We arrived at the theatre and took quite a few photos! As this was part of my birthday present, my Mum got me a special souvenir thingy to put my ticket in so obviously I posed outside the theatre with it! There was also a genies lamp outside the theatre that you could pose with, however no one was posing with it which was weird and as soon as I started posing with it, loads of other people wanted to as well. It was a little weird how people were ignoring it and then as soon as I got near it, everyone else wanted to!
We got inside the theatre half an hour early and saw that there was a clock room where you could put your bags and coats, however to our horror the theatre were charging £1 per item, so we spent the next couple of minutes fitting everything into 1 bag so we didn’t have to spend £10 on all our individual items. Once we had finished with this, we were then faced with the massive merchandise stall where you could get everything, from programmes, teddies, ornaments, pin badges, mugs, t-shirts, you name it, they had it. We did end up buying quite a fair bit and I did end up leaving stuff behind the counter that I really wanted (if anyone would like to buy me that Genie bear I would not complain!). There was so much and for Disney merch, it wasn’t badly priced.
Our seats in the theatre were amazing, we were up in the Royal Circle and in the second row. We were also right in the centre, so we had a pretty amazing view of the stage and the seats were super comfortable. I know, a weird thing to comment on, but they were so nice, and my bum did not go num at all whilst watching the performance which is always a plus when watching a performance!
Anyways, onto the bit that you are probably most interested in, the show! Like most of my reviews I will try not to include spoilers, however they may be a few, so this is your spoiler one! The show opens with the genie (but not as the genie??? mysterious!), you get a brief introduction to all the characters at this point as well, which is useful so that you know who everyone is. In the musical there are obviously songs from the film such as Arabian Nights, One Jump, Friend Like Me and A Whole New World, however, there are brand new songs such as Proud of Your Boy which is a ballad that Aladdin sings, A Million Miles Away (which is a ballad between Aladdin and Jasmine, that I think is my new favourite song from the musical that I hope they put in the live action movie!), and many more! The music was written by the legend that is Alan Menken (he wrote the music for the film also, so it was the perfect person to do it!). The actors were so good and the genie, WOW is all I can say! Trevor Dion Nicholas is an incredible actor and plays the genie insanely well.
The honestly had so much energy and sass about him it was just incredible! His performance of ‘Friend Like Me’ was honestly out of this world. I don’t think I have seen anything like it. The amount of dancing and movement he had to do whilst singing a song (that isn’t super easy to sing) was just insane. I mean there was a tap number in there, the odd skip in his step, the finger snapping, I mean you name it, it was probably in this 5 minute long song. It was honestly my favourite moment in the whole show and I remember my mouth opening in shock of how insane this was. The set was so sparkly and it all looked so real! I felt like I was actually in the Cave of Wonders with them and all the gold and jewels were real gold and jewels. It was so sparkly and so good that I just couldn’t believe my eyes. I think Friend Like Me is a song and musical number that has to go down in the musical history book as a this a moment to beat!
Obviously, one of the most important scenes in the entire film is the magic carpet ride whilst Aladdin and Jasmine sing ‘A Whole New World’ and I was curious to see how they were going to do this in real life as, unfortunately, magic flying carpets are not real (I know, trust me its as painful for me as it is for you, I know we all want our own Aladdin to take us on a carpet ride to see a whole new world). Now to be honest, I thought they did this pretty well! They climbed through Jasmine’s window onto the carpet and the walls of her room disappeared as the song started. The stage went dark and the stage was filled with stars. It was honestly so cute. One thing that I would wish for is that it was little bit lighter in there as it was a struggle to see Aladdin and Jasmine, however, I do understand why it is so dark, we don’t want to completely spoil the magic!
Overall, this was done really well and I think I would go as far and say that this is my new favourite musical and if anyone needs someone to go with to see this then hit me up as I would love to! A massive thank you to my Mum for the tickets to what I would like to call the best musical ever! I honestly can’t stop listening to the soundtrack!
