Latest news with #AlanMenken
New York Times
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
How Did ‘Hercules' Get So Lame?
How could a show about such an outsize hero as Hercules be so lame? That's the question hovering over a Disney-backed musical that arrived at the Theater Royal, Drury Lane, in London on Tuesday, just nine months after the playhouse waved goodbye to 'Frozen,' another screen-to-stage cull from the Disney catalog. First seen in New York's Central Park in 2019, 'Hercules' has undergone significant changes in personnel on its way to the West End, including a German-language premiere in Hamburg. But all the tweaking hasn't made a satisfying whole out of material that ought to feel a lot mightier than it does. Indeed, the production is so short — the second act is barely 40 minutes — that it begins to feel like its creators just wanted to get to the finish line and move on. Based on a 1997 animated film (midlevel Disney in my view), 'Hercules' casts its strongman central character (Luke Brady) as a puppyish young man trying to find his way in the world: as god, or mortal, or a hybrid of the two. To quote one of the better-known songs from Alan Menken and David Zippel's score, Hercules needs to go from 'zero to hero in no time flat.' That itself may help explain the rushed feel of the director Casey Nicholaw's production. Standing in the way of young Herc, as he is known, is his evil uncle Hades, who lords it over the underworld and casts a resentful eye on his brother Zeus's perch on Mt. Olympus. The role of venomous Hades has been given to Stephen Carlile, whose previous stage credits include the sneering Scar in 'The Lion King,' a villain cut from comparable cloth. Hades' two minions, Pain and Panic in the movie, here go by the rather more neutral names Bob and Charles. An inevitable love interest arrives in the cougarish form of Meg (Mae Ann Jorolan, a holdover from the Hamburg production), who has been enslaved by Hades but is quickly drawn to Hercules's string vest (He is 10 percent toga and the rest muscle, we're told, and the show features a largely bare-chested male chorus; for a family musical, 'Hercules' doesn't stint on suggestive eroticism.) While Hades whines and moans — 'I've lost everything but weight,' is how Robert Horn and Kwame Kwei-Armah's jokey book puts it — Hercules takes advice from the wisecracking trainer Phil (Trevor Dion Nicholas), who advises the young man to 'go the distance.' That happens to be the title of the show's best-known song, which was nominated for an Oscar in 1998 and gets several reprises here without ever raising the roof. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Telegraph
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The West End's latest musical Hercules is a blast for the under 10s
Disney stage adaptations tend to be conceived with a ruthless eye on the film's pre-existing fanbase. Not so this theatrical version of the 1997 animated riff on the Hercules myth, which is pointedly – and triumphantly – aimed at families with young children rather than the original's numerous disciples. Adaptors Kwame Kwei-Armah, the Young Vic's former artistic director, and Tony award-winning script writer Robert Horn may have made a few transgressive changes, but the fleet footed result has retained the original's goofy knockabout humour and refusal to take itself seriously. Best of all, it boasts a truly heaven sent quintet of Muses who sashay their way through Alan Menken 's still radiant gospel-driven score with just the right amount of sass to make your average tween squeal in delight. The bad news for the purists is that the several significant tweaks will leave them howling in outrage. Several key characters, including the mighty Titans and Hercules's dim but loyal equine friend Pegasus, have been excised. Panic and Pain, the demonic shapeshifters on team Hades, are now a couple of deadbeat blokes called Bob and Charles. The irritable satyr Philoctetes is now a world weary, very human waiter. Most unforgivably for the film's fans, Hades struts about in a blingy frock coat rather than shimmering in a haze of icy blue fire. Yet if you are under 10 years old and care less about such things, this punchy stage show is a blast. The story is simple. Following a botched raid by Bob and Charles, Zeus's son Hercules is destined to live among the mortals, yet with his god-given strength intact. Desperate to return home to Olympus, he must learn to behave in a way no god has yet managed. Yet his plans are beset by both his growing love for the reluctantly duplicitous Meg, who is enslaved to Hades, as well as the evil god's scheming. It's about as lightweight as an aspen leaf, and a lot of fun. Hercules has not had an easy route to the stage – previous try outs in the US and Hamburg were not met with flat out critical acclaim. And its current incarnation can't compete with Drury Lane's previous Disney occupant Frozen in terms of sheer artistic ambition: for all the towering human-held puppet monsters and Olympian grandeur of the set design, there is precious little here to induce wonder. There's the nagging suspicion that the many omissions – flying horses, chimeric fiends, the epic finale between Hercules and the Titans – were made in the name of creative expediency rather than narrative improvement. Yet the show's larky, pantomime feel has its own virtues. Luke Brady is an endearing wannabe hero, sporting a goofy grin worthy of Jim Carrey and singing the show's stand out song Go The Distance with palpable tenderness. The beefed up character of Meg doesn't come off so well – it's a pity male script writers tend to think fleshing out female characters means turning them instead into generic feminist mouth pieces – but Mae Ann Jorolan still exudes sarky hand-on-hip attitude. Stephen Carlile can't match James Woods, who voiced the original Hades, for sardonic whip-cracking malevolence, but given his brief was evidently camp panto villain, he rises to the task with gusto. And while the gag a minute script contains plenty of groaners, it thankfully avoids the temptation to slip into 21st century platitudes about identity and self worth that could have bogged things down. Nothing to scare the gods then, but for families with young children, an excellent tip for summer. Booking until Mar 28, 2026
Telegraph
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Disney legend Alan Menken: The dwarves are the whole point of Snow White
'Are we going to talk about Disney and woke?' Alan Menken makes a horrified face and draws a finger across his neck in a throat-cutting mime. 'I'm going to pull the plug on this interview if there is any mention of Disney and politics!' He's joking. Having composed some of the most memorable scores in the history of animation, including nine for Disney – from The Little Mermaid to Beauty and the Beast – Menken is not about to let a culture-war kerfuffle throw him off balance. 'It's fine,' he says. 'Ask me anything.' We are meeting a few months ahead of the West End opening of Hercules, a new stage-musical version of Disney's 1997 animated riff on Greek mythology, set to Menken's original gospel-driven score (with lyrics by David Zippel). 'It's a very sophisticated score stylistically,' he says. 'It has a lightness to it and a rhythmic propulsion.' A native New Yorker, Menken doesn't do false modesty – and why should he? After all, he's one of only 27 people ever to have achieved the EGOT, winning Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards. His last Academy Award came in 1996, for Pocahontas, though he's been nominated multiple times since. 'The Oscars have dried up because I've won eight of them now.' Yet it's another Disney production, the live-action remake of Snow White – not a film that Menken had anything to do with – which is dominating the headlines when we meet and that will, in the weeks that follow its woeful box-office performance, come to be seen as a nadir in the studio's muddled, frequently controversial project to update its much-loved back catalogue. At the time, Rachel Zegler, Snow White's leading lady, was drawing criticism from some quarters for comments she had made about Palestine, while the decision to have computer-generated dwarfs in an otherwise human cast had gone down badly with just about everyone. 'How you deal with all this stuff, it's as tricky as hell,' says Menken, who is in two minds about the whole idea of updating the classics, although he is sympathetic towards Zegler. 'She's just a kid. Yes, she said 'Free Palestine'. It's the kind of thing any of us might have said. We all want people to be free. Although, of course, there are also the nuances of history. 'But when it comes to the dwarfs…' He pauses, takes a breath. 'I'm sorry, but the dwarfs are what Snow White is all about!' There's been a bit of 'that stuff' with Hercules, he admits. The story, in which Hercules, a demigod raised among mortals, learns to embrace his destiny, has been updated for the stage show and, says Menken, now allows for its hero – depicted in the cartoon as a buff, blue-eyed redhead and played on stage by the dark-haired, Surrey-born actor Luke Brady – to be portrayed as 'a racial outsider'. Menken applauds the 'richness' this brings to the character, but laments the toning down of the cartoon's randy satyr, Philoctetes, who, he says with a hint of regret, will not be seen on stage 'running around lusting over nymphs'. 'At the time, you play with certain clichés because it's fun,' he says. 'But each new adaptation has to be sensitive to the passing of time and the way people will look at certain issues.' Menken is a hyperactive speaker; he talks in stops and starts, and is as physically expressive as any one of the animated characters to whom he has given such glorious musical voice over the years. He and his writing partner Howard Ashman are widely credited with reviving Disney's fortunes during the late 1980s after a prolonged period of creative and commercial decline for the studio in the decades that had followed the death of Walt Disney in 1966. The duo, who had already had a theatrical hit in 1982 with Little Shop of Horrors, struck gold three times in quick succession with The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Aladdin (1992), the lyrics for the last completed by Tim Rice following Ashman's death from Aids in 1991. Menken, who proudly calls himself 'the keeper of the flame', would go on to score Newsies, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Enchanted and Tangled. For him, the essence of Disney can be traced back to those classics of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s that have enriched the childhoods of multiple generations, and to the spirit of which his own scores nod. 'Fantasia, Dumbo, the later Winnie the Pooh: they all had a depth and a beauty, a proper form, a moral,' he says. 'When the Aids crisis hit, or when 9/11 happened, I couldn't watch the news, I couldn't watch my favourite action adventure movies, it was just too fraught a time. But I would watch Disney. For me, those films were the only safe space in the world. I grew up on those films, but, by the 1980s, it had all gone. So Howard and I came along and rebooted it.' Now, the company to which he has dedicated his career once again finds itself at a turning point, caught between trying to appease the more progressive yet censorious Left and the diehard traditionalist Right. Although Menken is in favour of a live-action remake of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (initially announced in 2019), he accepts that, given the story's more 'problematic' aspects, it is unlikely to go ahead. 'People will go, 'Let's leave out the fact that Frollo [Quasimodo's clergyman nemesis] is obsessed with the gipsy Esmeralda.' They'll say, 'We can't have Quasimodo as a hunchback.' Well, f--- that. I'd love to make a Hunchback movie [that follows] what Victor Hugo wrote. But it can't be done.' However, he says, swerving onto a more diplomatic course, 'I don't think Disney is having an identity crisis. Obviously, Disney has been very open for gay people and diversity and woke. And then woke became a dirty word. Sometimes, when you press against limits, things push back. But I know Bob,' he says, referring to the Disney CEO, Bob Iger. 'I think he's pretty savvy about the business model.' Menken grew up in a Jewish household in New York City during the dawn of rock 'n' roll in the 1950s and, throughout his early years, set his heart on becoming a pop star. 'I didn't want to go to school, ever,' he says. 'I was very ADHD. My parents were appalled.' When he told them he wanted to be a songwriter, in the mould of his hero Bob Dylan, they insisted that he practise the piano every single day. 'They imprinted on me the need to dig in and work. They would say, 'You want to be a shoe salesman instead?' I find it very depressing to buy shoes now.' After graduating from college in 1972, he attended the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop – a well-respected incubator for future Broadway talent – partly to placate his parents, who were musical-theatre fanatics. That same year, he met and fell in love with Janis Roswick, a ballet dancer; half a century later, they remain married and have two daughters. Suddenly, the itinerant lifestyle of a touring pop star no longer looked quite so appealing, so Menken dedicated himself instead to composition. It's often said of his Disney music that it lacks an identifying style of his own, unlike, say, the higher-brow Stephen Sondheim, whose musical imprimatur is instantly recognisable. 'You can only pull on the stuff that's in your gut,' Menken says. 'And when it comes to audiences, the great thing about Disney is that it's a leveller.' All the same, he is keen to point out that his scores do have musical and emotional specificity, be it the 'apocalyptic' Phil Spector girl-group sound behind Little Shop of Horrors or the ragtime influence on Newsies. 'I'm not trying to be egotistical, but that was very much my and Howard's approach: we established throughout our scores a specificity of place,' he says. By comparison, 'a lot of the new Disney scores are generic…'. He stops, as if reconsidering what he is about to say. 'I think they have moved into a different place, where a Lin-Manuel score is very much Lin-Manuel,' he continues, referring to Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of Hamilton, who wrote the Oscar-nominated score for Disney's 2021 film Encanto. 'That's not what Howard and I did, but, hey, things evolve.' At 75, Menken still has multiple projects on the go – including both a live-action remake and a stage adaptation of Tangled, the 2010 Disney animation loosely based on the story of Rapunzel – and can't imagine himself retiring any time soon. 'Well, I can if I think what I'm producing isn't good enough,' he says, 'but I haven't reached that point yet.'
Times
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
The 25 best Disney songs, ranked by our experts
Once heard, never forgotten … with almost every Disney cinematic hit comes at least one smash hit song, and usually more. The line of modern classics stretches from such gems as When You Wish Upon a Star through the imperial era of the multiple Oscar-winning composer Alan Menken (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Tangled) up to the lyrically complex — and more musically on-trend — numbers for Moana or Encanto crafted by Lin-Manuel Miranda. So important is music to a good Disney movie that several of its animations have become musicals on stage. The latest to receive the theatrical treatment is Hercules, featuring the much-loved ballad Go the Distance, while the Muses are played by a Motown-inspired girl band. Go the Distance makes it on to our list of the best 25 Disney songs — but did it grab the No 1 spot? Let us know what you think in the comments below, including which hits you think have been unfairly overlooked. Oh, and two points of order: our panel ruled that You've Got a Friend in Me from Toy Story was not eligible, because Toy Story was a Pixar movie before the studio was bought by Disney. And although Mary Poppins is not a fully animated film, we couldn't be without at least two of the Sherman Brothers' immortal hits. That would simply be atrocious. Panel: musician Tom Fletcher, the lead singer of McFly and composer of the forthcoming Paddington: the Musical; Murray Gold, Bafta-nominated composer for TV and film, including for Doctor Who; Lynette Linton, Bafta-nominated playwright and theatre director; Sir Stephen Hough, pianist and composer; Samantha Barks, actress, the star of the stage adaptation of Frozen in the West End; and the Times writers Neil Fisher, Blanca Schofield, Ed Potton and Dominic Maxwell 'We what the land folks love to cook/ Under the sea we off the hook.' Disney goes reggae, successfully so — bringing in an Oscar for the composer Alan Menken and the lyricist Howard Ashman, who really squeezed every last drop of juice out of maritime rhymes: see 'each little slug here/ cuttin' a rug here'. Somewhat painful, but wonderfully so. 'When he calls your name it all fades to black/ Yeah, he sees your dreams, he feeds on your screams.' Is Lin-Manuel Miranda's ensemble fusion of pop, hip-hop, show tunes, salsa and Cuban guajira the first Disney classic of the TikTok era? 'When you listen to it in 15-second clips, it's ten songs,' Miranda told The Times. 'It was uniquely suited for this technology and people went crazy with it.' 'Bless my soul, Herc was on a roll/ Person of the week in every Greek opinion poll.' Ancient Greek choruses are given the gospel treatment here and at a mighty pace too, worthy of the demigod hero. It speeds up even more towards the end, capturing the hysteria of modern celebrity culture as the Muses resort to just belting 'Hercules!' The theatre director Lynette Linton says: 'I used to dance around to this song in my living room imagining I was one of the Muses.' 'Look for the bare necessities/ The simple bare necessities/ Forget about your worries and your strife.'Not just a great song, not just a great play on words (bear! bare!), but a great rescue act. Before its role in the film, before getting endlessly played on the BBC TV show Disney Time (1961-98), this song from Baloo the bear to Mowgli the man-cub was actually written for an earlier version of the film. The songwriters Richard and Robert Sherman (the Sherman Brothers) kept this song by the folk singer Terry Gilkyson, discarding his other offerings in place of their own. 'Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious/ If you say it loud enough you'll always sound precocious.' Not just a great spelling challenge, a great song too. The Sherman Brothers, charged with writing a catchy song with a touch of the Edwardian music hall about it, came up with this language-bender for Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke to sing while in a cartoon environment. The composer Stephen Hough says: 'In this song it's the harmonies which are simple. The most basic chord progression (I-V-I-IV-I) underpins a perky tune, once heard, never forgotten … once you've memorised the longest word in showbusiness.' 'If you aren't shaking/ There's something very wrong/ 'Cause this may be the last time/ You hear the Boogie song.' Yes, Tim Burton's film is technically a Disney picture, released through a subsidiary because it was deemed too scary for kids. As, indeed, is this theme for the film's villain, Oogie Boogie, a piece of Tom Waits-style gothic cabaret that sizzles with malevolence. 'Chapter titles are like signs/ And if you read between the lines/ You'll find your first impression was mistook.' Not everyone loved the Poppins reboot, but there were some standout songs from the soundtrack, including this music hall style number delivered by Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Cleverly, the lyrics (about things not appearing to be what they are) anticipate the next plot twist when the children are kidnapped by malevolent cartoon animals. The Doctor Who composer Murray Gold says: 'The song has strong Lionel Bart vibes. Some of the critics got it really wrong about this movie's score.' 'What can I say except, 'You're welcome'/ For the tides, the sun, the sky/ Hey, it's OK, it's OK, you're welcome/ I'm just an ordinary demi-guy.' Lin-Manuel Miranda grew up equal parts infatuated with hip-hop and musical theatre. In this supernaturally catchy post-Hamilton tune for Maui the preening immortal demigod, voiced by Dwayne 'the Rock' Johnson, he comes up with a 'this is me' anthem so gorgeously dense with information we almost don't notice he's using it to distract our heroine Moana from a nefarious plan to nick her boat. • The top 20 Disney animated movies ranked 'As you sweep the floor/ What used to be a bore/ Will feel just like a game/ And not the same old chore it was before.' Even the recent Snow White remake couldn't massacre this timelessly breezy classic from the Disney stalwart Frank Churchill. The lyrics by Larry Morey, who also did Heigh-Ho, were adapted by schoolchildren in the Forties to 'Hitler is a jerk, Mussolini is a weenie.' 'Darling, here's what I suggest/ Skip the drama/ Stay with mama.'OK, we all know that Alan Menken can write a tune. Here he's cooking with gas, though, because of the salty lyrics by Glenn Slater — and an original performance by a true Broadway broad, Donna Murphy. As Mother Gothel, Murphy spits out the disingenuous warnings to her foster daughter Rapunzel (complete with some fat-shaming, nice) with glorious, thespian relish. 'How high does the sycamore grow?/ If you cut it down, then you'll never know.' She's a Native American princess, he's an English sea captain. He has gunpowder and real shoes, but does that really make him superior, when she can sing with all the voices of the mountain? The singer from the band McFly, Tom Fletcher, who is writing Paddington: The Musical, says: 'The lyrics are so beautiful and poetic and when you combine that with Menken's melody it is just pure magic.' 'Out there/ Strolling by the Seine/ Taste a morning out there/ Like ordinary men.' A standout 'I want' song — the genre where the hero or heroine declares her greatest wish — which admittedly sounds like about five different Broadway anthems spliced together, sung by the eponymous cathedral-dwelling Parisian as he longs for one normal day in the city. Tom Hulce acted and sang the role in the animation — you might know him better as Mozart in the movie Amadeus. 'One of my all-time favourite songs,' Fletcher says. • The best Pixar movies ranked, from Toy Story to The Incredibles 'Give it to your sister, your sister's stronger/ See if she can hang on a little longer.' The viral buzz may have gone to We Don't Talk About Bruno from Encanto, but that earworm is second to this viscerally stressful confession of an overworked older sibling, perfectly instrumentalised so that each 'tick, tick, tick' brings a haunting sense of an impending breakdown. 'I've heard some corny birds who who tried to sing/ Still a cat's the only cat who knows how to swing.' Following his turn as Baloo, Disney's king of cool Phil Harris returned as Thomas O'Malley, the jazzy alley cat who, with his feline friends, delivers this witty number that starts off on a suave beat before exploding into wonderful frenzied chaos. 'Rest your head close to my heart/ Never to part, baby of mine.' Only the most icy-hearted cynics could fail to be moved by this scene where our flappy-eared protagonist is cradled by caged Mama Dumbo's trunk. It was another Frank Churchill Oscar-nominated hit, devastatingly performed by Betty Noyes. 'And can you feel the love tonight? (Tonight)/ How it's laid to rest?/ It's enough to make kings and vagabonds/ Believe the very best.' Circle of Life is a majestic scene-setter but it's shaded by this humongous slab of emotion, written by Elton John and the lyricist Tim Rice and sung by Kristle Murden in her only appearance in the film. It won an Oscar, a Grammy and a Golden Globe and that doesn't feel over the top. • The best TV shows on Disney+ to watch next 'I can show you the world/ Shining, shimmering, splendid.' Another winner of the Oscar-Grammy-Golden Globe treble, Menken's soaring power ballad feels like the natural accompaniment to a magic carpet ride. Tim Rice's rousing words are sung with panache by Brad Kane (Aladdin) and Lea Salonga (Jasmine). 'It's one of the most iconic duets in musical history,' argues the actress Samantha Barks, who played Elsa in Frozen in the West End. 'Tale as old as time/ True as it can be/ Barely even friends/ Then somebody bends/ Unexpectedly.' A sumptuous ballad, written by Menken with words by Ashman, and sung with élan (and in one take) by the great Angela Lansbury. Her version knocks the later duet by Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson into a dusty teapot. 'Timeless, perfect and makes me cry every time,' Fletcher says. 'When you wish upon a star/ Makes no difference who you are/ Anything your heart desires/ Will come to you.' It was sung originally by Cliff Edwards as Jiminy Cricket, but it's one of those songs that's even better known than the film from which it comes. The first Disney tune to win best song at the Oscars, it became the company's theme tune, heard since 1985 when the logo appears at the start of the film. It was composed by Leigh Harline with lyrics by Ned Washington, who also wrote the words to When I See An Elephant Fly in Dumbo. 'Remember me, though I have to travel far/ Remember me each time you hear a sad guitar.' Pixar's Mexican Day of the Dead drama is built around music and memory and this Oscar-winning tearjerker is its crown jewel. Written by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, the couple behind Let It Go in Frozen, it's so versatile it can be sung in the film in mariachi, lullaby and pop styles. • The 25 best animated films ranked — from Snow White to Up 'I would go most anywhere to find where I belong.' Shimmering into life with an old-school Hollywood horn fanfare, Menken's 'I want' song for Disney's muscular hero hasn't become more beloved perhaps only because Roger Bart's vocal performance is rather weedy. But the Oscar-nominated number (it lost to My Heart Will Go On from Titanic) got much more stirring treatment from Michael Bolton, for whom it became a signature dish. 'Though her words are simple and few/ 'Listen, listen,' she's calling to you.' Tuppence a bag? The hard-as-nails nanny softens up to sing a lullaby about the bird lady outside St Paul's Cathedral. Stephen Hough says: 'This tune of Schubertian simplicity, not needing words to make its effect, seems a symbol for a whole century of Disney's curated emotion. Notice how the second half of the refrain changes register not notes to tease an extra tear from the willing eye.' 'Now, I'm the king of the swingers/ The jungle VIP/ I've reached the top and had to stop/And that's what's bothering me.' The jazz singer and trumpeter Louis Prima sang and played on this upbeat Dixieland-style tune by the Sherman Brothers, playing Louie, the monkey king. Phil Harris, (Baloo the bear) replaced scats recorded by Prima's bandleader Sam Butera with his own. Murray Gold says: 'It's pure joy — in an unexpectedly complex song about the competition for technology between rival civilisations. Character and plot advance together perfectly, which is the point.' • Read more film reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews 'Bet'cha on land they understand/ Bet they don't reprimand their daughters/ Bright young women, sick of swimmin'/ Ready to stand.' Amazingly, Disney almost binned Ariel's aquatic cri de coeur, its execs fearing that the song was too long to keep small children interested. Only the lyricist Ashman threatening to quit the movie kept it in. 'It's such an iconic 'I want' song,' Barks says. For Linton, it was 'a childhood classic. I used to think I was Ariel and sing it to the TV.' 'I don't care what they're going to say/ Let the storm rage on/ The cold never bothered me anyway.' Who hasn't felt the sting of life's flames and constructed a fortress of ice for themselves? Metaphorically speaking, anyway. Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez's power ballad is so powerful it needs no context: in the context of Frozen, it's the moment when everything changes for Elsa the snow queen (and its arrival halfway through production prompted a rewrite to make Elsa less of an outright villain). Barks says: 'There's no way I would consider any other song for No 1!'Hercules is at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, London. Stephen Hough performs his Mary Poppins Suite at Wigmore Hall, London on May 19, 2026Love TV? Discover the best shows on Netflix, the best Prime Video TV shows, the best Disney+ shows , the best Apple TV+ shows, the best shows on BBC iPlayer , the best shows on Sky and Now, the best shows on ITVX, the best shows on Channel 4 streaming, the best shows on Paramount+ and our favourite hidden gem TV shows. Don't forget to check our comprehensive TV guide for the latest listings
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Alan Menken gives update on Disney's Tangled live action movie and confirms stage adaptation in the works
Alan Menken has shared his excitement about working on Disney's live action reimagining of Tangled. The legendary American composer, 75, worked on the original 2010 animated movie which is loosely based on the German fairy tale Rapunzel in the collection of folktales published by the Brothers Grimm. Featuring the voice talents of Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi, and Donna Murphy, it tells the story of Rapunzel, a lost young princess with magical long blonde hair who yearns to leave her secluded tower. She accepts the help of an intruder to take her out into the world which she has never seen. The animated feature's success inspired the 2012 short film Tangled Ever After and 2017 TV series Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure. It also saw EGOT Menken earn his 19th Oscar nomination for the song I See the Light. The House of Mouse confirmed in December that a live action film had been greenlit, helmed by Greatest Showman and Better Man director Michael Gracey. While Menken - who is set to perform his first ever UK solo shows at the London Palladium next month - says they are 'just at the starting gate', he told The Standard in a rare interview that he's 'excited' for what's to come. Speculation online has seen Florence Pugh a frontrunner for the role of Rapunzel, while Kathryn Hahn is a fan-favourite pick to star as Mother Gothel. 'I'm not going to even… It's way too early and it's a director's medium,' Menken deflects. 'I will definitely defer to others to say, but what's great is when you go to a new medium you have a new team and all kinds of new aspects are being explored which is really exciting.' He also confirmed reports from last year that he's working on a stage musical of Tangled, but caveats it with there are 'no firm plans except completing a version for licensing'. Adding: 'No one should speculate on anything beyond that.' Menken previously helped to develop a short Tangled live show for Disney Cruise Lines in 2015. This included three new songs written for the show by himself and Glenn Slater – Flower of Gold, When She Returns, and Wanted Man. While Menken won't elaborate on what could make it to the big screen or future stage productions, he does say a cameo by original Rapunzel voice actress Moore in the new film wouldn't be out of the question, ala Jodie Benson in the Little Mermaid live action movie. There was a lovely scene in the 2023 film that saw Benson, who voiced Ariel in the 1989 animation, hand a fork or 'Dinglehopper' over to her live action counterpart played by Halle Bailey. Menken also cited how much he enjoyed Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel's 'lovely cameos' in last year's Wicked movie after they originated the roles of Glinda and Elphaba on Broadway. Fans will be hoping to gleam some more when Menken takes to the stage in the capital for two shows on March 9 - a matinee and an evening performance - which will delve into his storied career, spanning more than 40 years, They promise to be an unforgetable experience with the New York-native touching on his time before and at the centre of the Disney Renaissance (Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, etc) and beyond, with his other current projects including musicals of Night At The Museum, Animal Farm and Nancy Drew. Plus, two Disney musicals make their highly-anticipated West End debut this summer with Hercules opening at Threatre Royal Drury Lane in June and two performances of a specially staged concert of Hunchback of Notre Dame at the Prince Edward Theatre on August 17. For more information and to buy tickets to see A Whole New World of Alan Menken, visit
