Lion King

The African-American experience in the 20th century and Japanese robotics of the 21st; starry guest artists at the National Symphony Orchestra and a salute to its outgoing music director; a festival of a cappella music and a concert series of veteran Broadway singers - that's just some of what's in store for the Kennedy Center's 2007-2008 season. "It's sure to be a great and diverse season," the center's president, Michael Kaiser, said yesterday. His announcement of the lineup was preceded by a trumpet-playing robot from Japan, heralding a two-week festival next February celebrating Japanese "culture and hyperculture."

Do you have theater-lovers on your Christmas list? Here are some gift suggestions.One of the most stunning coffee table books we've come across this season is the updated, expanded edition of "Julie Taymor: Playing with Fire." Written by Taymor and Eileen Blumenthal, this hefty volume was first published by Abrams in 1995, before Taymor had won her Tony Awards for "The Lion King."Now heftier still, it has new chapters on five additional Taymor productions, including "The Lion King"; her soon-to-be-released motion picture, "Titus"; and her 1996 production of "The Green Bird," which will be revived on Broadway later this season.

The voice roared through City Springs Elementary School's auditorium yesterday, causing a hush to ricochet through the room.It was a voice they had heard before -- Darth Vader in "Star Wars" and King Mufasa in "The Lion King" -- but now the school's 344 pupils sat face-to-stage with the real deal: actor James Earl Jones.Jones was at the East Baltimore school bringing to life the children's book "Where the Wild Things Are" and to launch Bell Atlantic's reading partnership, "Books and Breakfast," with the school.

Broadway's two new blockbuster musicals, "Ragtime" and "The Lion King," racked up the largest number of Tony Award nominations in New York yesterday. The lion's share, however, went to "Ragtime," which garnered 13 nominations, compared with 11 for "The Lion King."In most categories, "The Lion King," the stage adaptation of Disney's 1994 animated feature, will go head-to-head with "Ragtime," based on E.L. Doctorow's novel about three turn-of-the-century families (a touring production opened at Washington's National Theatre last week)

The last line of an article on the Tony Awards was inadvertently omitted in yesterday's Arts & Society section. The final paragraph should have read:Twenty years from now, when your neighborhood dinner theater, community theater or high school stages "Ragtime," it will still be a great musical. But when -- or if -- they stage "The Lion King," it will still be a cartoon.The Sun regrets the errors.Pub Date: 6/08/98

The last line of an article on the Tony Awards was inadvertently omitted in yesterday's Arts & Society section. The final paragraph should have read:Twenty years from now, when your neighborhood dinner theater, community theater or high school stages "Ragtime," it will still be a great musical. But when -- or if -- they stage "The Lion King," it will still be a cartoon.The Sun regrets the errors.NEW YORK - "The Lion King" vs. "Ragtime." Tonight's Tony Award competition for best musical boils down to a spirited race between two shows that, on the surface, have several things in common.

In Greek mythology, Zeus was king of the gods, Apollo was god of the sun, and Disneyocles was god of Entertainment.Every year, Disneyocles would descend Mount Olympus bearing gifts of high art -- usually on VHS tape. The ancient roads to the Acropolis would be closed for the Parades marking each release. Gifts from Disneyocles would be discounted with any drive-through purchase at Olive King. And the god of Entertainment (and his stockholders) said this was good.One day, during a break in the Peloponnesian Wars, Hercules was at his health club doing 20 sets of ab crunches, when Disneyocles descended upon him."

ZELEANA Morris of Hammond High School's English department was among teachers honored at a recent luncheon at the Board of Education, and now she's been nominated by the senior class at Hammond as the Teacher of the Year.Officials at Hammond say this isn't the first time that Mrs. Morris has been so named. She's a popular teacher of an often difficult subject. Congratulations.Honor roll, S-ZHere it is the final installment of Hammond's elite thinkers. Take note of these students, future judges, software designers and paleontologists.

"I GET A Kick Out of You," "It's De-Lovely," "Friendship," "Let's Misbehave."It's hard to imagine a musical with funnier, more romantic and durable songs than Cole Porter's "Anything Goes," and you can enjoy all the shipboard sweetness and intrigue in Atholton High School's production March 28, 29 and 30.Cast members include Sara Glazer, Dave Johnson, Courtney Bell, Jeff Hubbard, Melissa Millin, Kyle Hubbard, Ryan Sullivan, Jon Sanford and Maggie Sheer.Keith Marin, Jon Sykes, Tom Lukacsina, Jordon Schulman, John Armstrong, Patrick Morton, Danny Dworkin and Alan Landsman also have roles.

OAKLAND MILLS resident Pat Muth, artistic director at Columbia Ice Rink, will present "Pocahontas" and "The Lion King," an ice extravaganza performed by members of the Columbia Figure Skating Club this Saturday and Sunday at the Columbia Ice Rink on Thunder Hill Road at the Oakland Mills Village Center.East Columbia performers skating major roles in the "Circle of Life" are Lauren Clark as Scar, Amanda Buckler as Old Simba and Amy Buckler as young Nala in "The Lion King."Many of the skaters have competed in the South Atlantic and Junior National competitions.

Classical Baltimore Symphony Orchestra: 8 p.m. Thursday at Music Center at Strathmore, 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda; 8 p.m. Friday at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, 1212 Cathedral St. $25-$60. Call 410-783-8000 or go to bsomusic.org. A slightly off-beat program that turned into a hit of the 2006-2007 Baltimore Symphony Orchestra season gets a summer rerun this week. At the heart of the program, led by BSO concertmaster Jonathan Carney, is T he Four Seasons, Vivaldi's matched set of violin concertos doubling as highly descriptive nature walks.

The national touring production of The Lion King that has stalked into the Kennedy Center is a reminder of just what a seminal piece of theater this 10-year-old show continues to be. So prodigious is director Julie Taymor's visual imagination, so generous is her spirit, that it makes most other Broadway hits (such as the recent blockbuster Wicked, or even In the Heights, which won this year's Tony Award for best musical) seem like they are weak and insipid and candidates for being culled from the herd.

Not so long ago left for dead, the movie musical is showing renewed signs of life this year, even if filmmakers are still trying to figure out what form that life will take. Hairspray, the film version of the Broadway play based on sleaze auteur John Waters' ode to integration and other weighty matters on Baltimore's early-'60s dance floors (whew!), was one of the summer's surprise hits. With a total box-office take so far of $116.4 million, it's the fourth-highest-grossing movie musical ever, behind only The Sound of Music, Grease and Chicago.

ACT I, SCENE I And for dessert ... Broadway THE LION KING / / Minskoff Theatre, 200 W. 45th St., New York / / 800-334-8457 or disneybroadway.com ONLINE: To view a video of Julian Ivey of "The Lion King," go to baltimoresun.com / simba Julian Ivey Born: Aug. 3, 1995 in Cheverly Resides: temporarily in New York City Siblings: Alex, 17; David, 14; Troy, 9; Aaron, 7. First unpaid acting role: A "sleepyhead" in a local production of The Wizard of Oz What he brought to New York: photos of friends and a necklace his mother bought for him on a business trip to El Salvador "Special abilities" listed on acting resume: soccer, horseback riding, gymnastics, infectious laughter, great whistler Favorite actor: Denzel Washington What he misses most about being away from home?

The African-American experience in the 20th century and Japanese robotics of the 21st; starry guest artists at the National Symphony Orchestra and a salute to its outgoing music director; a festival of a cappella music and a concert series of veteran Broadway singers - that's just some of what's in store for the Kennedy Center's 2007-2008 season. "It's sure to be a great and diverse season," the center's president, Michael Kaiser, said yesterday. His announcement of the lineup was preceded by a trumpet-playing robot from Japan, heralding a two-week festival next February celebrating Japanese "culture and hyperculture."

At a time when television and radio get raunchier by the minute, the movies and the live world of Broadway seem to have struck gold with good old-fashioned family fare. Broadway set a box-office record Christmas week with $29.1 million in ticket sales, paced by shows like Wicked and Mary Poppins that are tailor-made for a family outing -- though not a cheap one. The biggest movies ditched explicit language, graphic violence and casual sex in favor of the tap-dancing penguin Mumble in Happy Feet and Ben Stiller matching wits with a dinosaur replica that comes to life in Night at the Museum.

On Broadway, he's been the vampire count in Dracula, The Musical; Scar, the venomous lion in The Lion King; and Dr. Frank N. Furter, a Transylvanian transsexual in The Rocky Horror Show. But in the touring production of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels - which opens a one-week run at the Hippodrome tomorrow - you won't see actor Tom Hewitt decked out in a cape or an animal mask or seven-inch high heels. Instead, as consummate Scoundrels' con artist Lawrence Jameson, Hewitt gets to wear a suit. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels Nov. 28-Dec.

On a warm afternoon at the end of the first week of school, 25 dance students executed perfectly synchronized leaps across the sunlit studio at the Baltimore School for the Arts. In dance lingo, they were performing grand jetes. But it didn't take a leap of the imagination to see them as a graceful herd of gazelles in The Lion King. The comparison came to mind because the students were attending a master class taught by Rachel Tucker, a 1986 School for the Arts graduate and dance supervisor of the touring production of The Lion King that ended its run at the Hippodrome Theatre on Sunday.

Ticket sales for the 14-week run of The Lion King that ended Sunday at the Hippodrome Theatre totaled more than $15 million, and the show was seen by nearly 230,000 people, according to figures released yesterday by the Hippodrome Foundation and Clear Channel Entertainment, which operates the theater. The Mid-Atlantic debut of the 1998 Tony Award-winning musical played to audiences averaging 97 percent capacity. With allowances for seats the show used for promotional or other purposes, "we literally sold everything that we could," said Marks Chowning, executive director of the Hippodrome.

They grew up worlds apart - James Brown-Orleans in Ghana and Joe Jones in Lafayette Homes. But in at least one respect, they ended up in the same place, as staunch believers in the importance of strengthening relationships between fathers and sons. Tonight, Brown-Orleans, an actor in the touring production of The Lion King, and Jones, president and founder of the nonprofit Center for Fathers, Families and Workforce Development, will share the stage when they join other fathers and their children in the final number of The Rising of the Son, a benefit for CFWD, performed by Lion King cast members at Center Stage.