The magic Box from Disney, illuminated, awaits the public arriving at the Opera Theater on the stage. She is small, but then she will grow, like the ambitions of this show that brings together fragments of 78 iconic Disney songs and 22 people on stage.
There is a whole production deployment that will start when the little box, by magic, becomes huge. The protagonist is sitting in the audience. She can be any of us, but Mara (Luján Blaksley) is guided by a little yellow light and taken to the stage. And yes, as if she were Alice in Wonderland, enter. She doesn’t know what awaits her.
Neither do the spectators.
The magic Box It is a medley of moments, without a sequence that marks which song will come intertwined or after which. The arrangements by Isaac Saúl (musical director, arranger and orchestrator) are truly to be applauded, as is the performance of the orchestra, which is in the pit.
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The Disney show that premiered at the Opera.
Everything you see on stage is Disney in its purest form.
The device of the Box is like a SUM: a Multipurpose Room. It will open and close, and will give rise to space for the different sets with which the songs are faced. And if we were talking about the arrangements, there are times when two songs are combined at the same time. Thus, the sea encompasses a theme of The little Mermaid y el leit motive de Pirates of the Caribbean (one of the best moments).
At the beginning, Jiminy Cricket’s shadow appears projected to the side (he will also appear Bambi). The visual work of The magic Box It’s great. There are audiovisual resources, mappings, projections of all kinds on the walls of the Box, which move or are fixed. It is also impressive when Goofy’s hand is crushed on a piano, it remains enormous, he puts it in a bucket of water and it returns to its size.
Mickey and PLuto, two of the six puppets in the play, with their puppeteers.Goofy is one of the six puppets that make up the cast and interact with the other dancers, singers and actors, in addition to Mara. This is how Mickey Mouse, icon of these hundred years of the company’s history, appears on stage. And there will be Minnie, Donald Duck, Daisy (Donald’s partner, so often postponed) and Pluto.
78 songs in 90 minutes
There are movies that have more songs represented, such as Mary Poppins (6), the same number as The little Mermaid (of Under the sea a Besala), 4 of Beauty and the Beast (Our guest be you could not be missed) and The Lion King (con The endless cycle y No trouble), Charm y Moanathree of Aladdin and of Hercules…Luckily they included The jungle bookand they even got to put My wishof Wishreleased here a week ago.
Mappings, projections: the visual display is enormous.Obviously there will be absences in a 90-minute show, without an interval. Disney movies that are not musicals run from behind. Of Pinocchio We said that we saw Jiminy Cricket, and the whale that appears must be the one that swallowed the wooden doll turned into a child (and two fragments of songs). Of Snow White there are apples and a little blue bird (and 4 fragments of songs), but of Dumbo (Walt Disney was at the premiere of the elephant movie, and Snow White in this same theater, in 1941), nothing, unless we imagine that the pen belongs to him.
But as we said, the songs come and go, from medley to medley, they are not in order nor are those from musical films all together. There are themes of The strange world of Jackthe hits of Tarzan, Mulan y Pocahontas, Coco y Charm.
The moment of “Pirates of the Caribbean”, one of the most successful.The fact that Mara does not speak, does not explain what is happening to her, is surely a handicap for the little ones. There is nothing to understand other than seeing and listening to the performances of the songs they know by heart from so many times played on video, DVD or streaming.
The costumes are very colorful, as are the performances in general (Manelik Cambiaso is one of the names to remember).
“The Magic Box” will continue at the Opera Theater until the end of March.Written and directed by Thaddeus McWhinnie Phillips, The magic Box It has nothing to envy of Broadway musicals.
Script and direction: Thaddeus McWhinnie Phillips. Co-director and choreographer: Lynne Kurdziel Formato. Director musical: Isaac Saul. General Producer: Felipe Gamba Paredes. Con: Luján Blaksley, Lala Livschitz, Mauricio Vila, Menelik Cambiaso and 18 other actors. Duration: 90 minutes. Sala: Opera Theatre. Features: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 6:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., Sunday at 7 p.m. Appetizer: from $8,000 to $20,000.