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From American Psycho to The Lion King? “Yeah, it’s quite a shift in tone...” admits Posi Morakinyo, as he and Asha Parker-Wallace burst out laughing.
Yes, in the kind of strange twist only Theatreland could manage, the two new leads of the West End family blockbuster, The Lion King at the Lyceum theatre, are both coming straight from the cast of the bloodthirsty serial killer musical American Psycho, which was a recent hit revival at the Almeida. Friends and colleagues Morakinyo and Parker-Wallace - now also to be known as Simba and Nala - see the funny side of the shift, but this is simply the life of an actor, where the projects vary wildly and you have to jump at opportunities that present themselves. Besides, simply on a practical level, the high energy demands of American Psycho - all hardbodies, 80s music and splattering action - has been excellent physical preparation for what is to come...
“As performers we like to stay on top of our, physical health and mental health to give the same standard of performance anyway,” says Parker-Wallace, “But here you've got to to play animals on stage, you've got to be strong in your stature, your stance. The good thing is they’ve had 27 years of refining The Lion King, so the guys taking care of us are more than equipped. Tomorrow we have an injury prevention meeting. They've got an in-house physio team. They have many a PT on hand. Someone on the production had broken their ankle and within 7 weeks they were back on stage. So they will care for us while I feel like I can go home and learn my lines, get in the right headspace, try not to put my body in any jeopardizing positions, and as a company they will just usher me on my way to climbing Pride Rock...”
Did we say The Lion King was a family blockbuster? How about a theatrical juggernaut? A London theatre institution? A must-visit as important as the National Gallery? One fllippin’ big show?
Yes, Julie Taymor’s internationally celebrated stage adaptation is all these things. After the Disney animated film in 1994, The Lion King first opened on Broadway in 1997, was showered with Tony awards, and 29 global productions in nine different languages have been created since then. It is renowned as an epic work, recreating the African savanna and its array of creatures with stunning design, costumes puppets, and of course the classic songs. It is mythic, it is marvellous, and the two new cast members are suitably excited yet humbled about what is to come when they start their performances on 5 May.
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“For me personally, this is the biggest scale show that I've done so far,” says Parker-Wallace, who made a big splash with her West End debut in Burlesque: The Musical at the Savoy Theatre last year.
“I've done like a couple of West End shows now with like a lot of buzz and like acclaim and hype, but I've never done something with this kind of legacy before,” says Morakinyo, who made his own considerable splash in For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy, “This feels stepping into Buckingham Palace instead of Soho House. I think naturally there is a pressure because it's not something that we're creating, it's something that we're stepping into, so there is an expectation. But also I don't feel the pressure because the vetting process is so thorough that I don't believe 27 years down the line they'd make a mistake of picking me to do this!
But we were stood on the stage today and we climbed Pride Rock and we were like, ‘Wow, this isn't a joke.’ Like the Rock is older than both Asha and I! We're standing on history. There's pressure, but it's the support is greater than the pressure.”
Speaking of that vetting process, you don’t just casually walk into a show like this, and the pair - photographed by Perou at London landmarks for a special shoot reflecting their new place in the fabric of the city - had to go through a suitably intense set of auditions.
Morakinyo says, “I remember we were in rehearsals [for American Psycho] and during our break Asha stepped out of the room and when she came back there was just this look on her face. She’s like, ‘I just got off the phone with my agent, and I got the part!’ But then she came to me after meeting some of the team and said they're auditioning Simba....
I had an audition like a couple of days later on, on a Wednesday, on the Friday I went in again and met more of the UK team and on the Sunday I was on a flight to Madrid to meet their international team. I did an audition on their stage and I met the MD, the Associate Director and some of the management team. And three days later they asked if I'd like to play the role. These kind of long running shows, they don't come around as often, and when they do, it’s takes time. But I'm not complaining.”
While they can operate with the confidence of the experienced team behind them, there are challenges ahead, and some very specific ones for Morakinyo.
“For me it's the vocal, Simba is a young, sprightly adolescent man whose voice probably hasn't broken yet and I'm far beyond that point!” he says, “So the challenge is finding what my voice is as Simba, taking on some of the big songs that he sings and sustaining that for 8 shows a week. I’ve done other shows where you sing with heart, and if you’re having a bad day, you can bring that into the performance. This is not that. The role is very specific and it’s universal. So it is personal to me, but it also has to relate to everyone, so it's being able to sustain that.”
Parker-Wallace adds, “The challenge that I face is the physicality of the piece, the way Nala exists in the space. I'm not a lion! So how to translate me into the Nala something that , will be a challenge for me.
I think Nala is also a really strong like female presence in in Simba's life and in the story, and something that I connect with in Nala is that I like to be empowered as a woman and Nala is a very assertive, strong, powerful woman. That connection is something that I'm like really looking forward to like exploring.”
But that very personal approach is exactly why they will both no doubt be huge successes in the role. This is Morakinyo on his personal connection to Simba: “I think it is important to connect to your characters because the main goal as an actor is to portray an emotion or to tell the story. It's not a personal thing, but by adding some of your personal experiences you can connect better which can make people understand or relate better to the story that you're telling.
This is a dream for me, because for any young Black boy, this ambition or drive or hope is something that's embedded to a lot of us, and also there's a sense of imposter syndrome. They are two sides of the same coin, and they are mental spaces that I deeply connect to. You wanna be stood on the top of all your mountains, like I conquered every single journey, but then you're also in the wilderness going, ‘I don't want anyone to see me and I literally would bury my head in the sand forever!’ So Simba is someone I'm really on board with.”
Further to this, and as the show’s long-running success clearly shows, Simba and the other characters’ stories are accessible to a wide range of people, in the kind of myth that resonates through the years.
“I think the success of the show is testament to the story which has so many different touch points for people at different points in their lives,” says Morakinyo, “It will depend on where you meet the show or where the show meets you. It's a story of humanity, it's literally the circle of life. When you watch a baby being born and then that same baby stand there and emulate his father, it shows how there are certain forces that you can't stop but you can overcome. Any human will agree that you will have forces that come your way, you can't stop that from happening, but what you can do is respond to it in a way that allows you to grow and succeed.”
