Nearly a year into its Broadway run, Aida remains an unqualified audience hit. Many critics have grumbled about this show, which had its Atlanta debut in 1998, but the musical is still packing `em in at the Palace Theater.
Based on Verdi's 1871 opera, Aida is the story of an enslaved African princess, Aida, and her love for Radames, a military captain in the Egyptian guard. As in the tale of Romeo and Juliet, this doomed love affair horrifies both of the young lovers' families. However, Aida is actually a love triangle that includes Amneris, an Egyptian princess pledged to Radames. Aida becomes Amneris' personal slave, which conveniently puts the threesome in constant contact.
Many things about the show could stand improvement, but some of the casting is first-rate. Aida has rightfully put its young star, Heather Headley, into the theatrical firmament. She is outstanding in every respect, with all the right moves, the right look, the right voice and the right attitude to make Aida an unforgettable heroine. Another performer, Sherie Rene Scott, plays the ditzy princess Amneris to the max; she is a deft comic talent who milks every laugh yet retains her dignity. She's almost a cartoon in the first scenes, but then she gradually evolves into the forceful young ruler she is destined to become. She gracefully takes her place on the throne, even as she sentences her love interest and her best friend to death for treason.
As Radames, Adam Pascal generates far less interest than the women. He sings well but doesn't display the passion one might expect of a young warrior, flush with the triumph of his latest victory.
Another plus is the show's lush production values. Aida is a revelation in terms of its use of light and movement. A fluid motion literally carries the show from beginning to end, whether it's the wind fluttering in the silk sails of a ship, the sweep of a fashionable hem or the tiny gold wafers drifting down from the sky in the wedding scene. This lifts the show into a higher realm, and we are swept away into another place and another time.
Surprising for a musical, the music itself isn't more than an afterthought. Some is irritatingly derivative, but other passages are quite moving, especially in one of the "big" numbers, "Elaborate Lives," and in smaller ones, such as the intimate "How I Know You," beautifully rendered by Headley and Damian Perkins as Mereb, a Nubian slave. Headley convincingly rouses the spirit of her people in the act I closer, "The Gods Love Nubia."
