Theater: Can You Feel a Hit Tonight?

In the fall of 1998, all anyone wanted to talk about was the pyramid. It was a giant motorized contraption that dominated the stage during the Atlanta pre-Broadway tryout of Elaborate Lives: The Legend of Aida, Disney's musical retelling of the tale of ancient Egypt that was the basis for Verdi's famous opera. The pyramid opened, it closed, it transformed itself into different sets. It seemed a suitably dazzling follow-up to Julie Taymor's innovative production of The Lion King, Disney's Broadway hit. The trouble was it didn't work, at least not very often. "Every time I saw the show, it broke down," says composer Elton John. "It got on the cast's nerves. It dragged everybody down."

The pyramid wasn't the only thing not working in Atlanta. Shortly after the run was finished, Disney's theatrical honchos fired the director, choreographer and design team and set out to do a major retooling. After two big Broadway successes, the entertainment giant seemed on the verge of its first stage pratfall. Not everybody on the Great White Way was prepared to shed tears.

Now, a year and a half later, Aida--show revamped, title pared down--is just days away from its Broadway opening. And darned if they haven't pulled it off. Unlike Beauty and the Beast, Aida doesn't arrive with a presold children's story and a hit movie to lure the family throngs. Unlike The Lion King, it doesn't break new theatrical ground--not even for the pyramid, whose only remnant is a laser triangle glimpsed briefly in the second act. But on its own terms, Aida is a big, bright, ingeniously staged show that--not going too far out on a limb here--should be Broadway's next monster hit.

To be sure, this is unmistakably a Disney product, mounted and mass-audience-tested like a theme-park ride. The opera's tragic story--about an Egyptian captain, Radames, and his forbidden love for the slave princess Aida--has been put through the studio's familiar food processor. Each of the main characters clashes with an authoritarian father; Aida is a feisty, headstrong heroine in the line of Mulan and Pocahontas; the bad guys dress in fascistic black trench coats. (And while the Nubian slaves are mostly African Americans, the Egyptians seem to have acquired a blond gene.) Those Disney magicians have even found a way to retain the opera's tragic ending and still have everyone live happily ever after.