When you consider that the opera, Aida, was written-to-order for the Cairo Opera House, the narrative liberties taken by Elton John, Tim Rice etc. seem less heinous. Flag-crossed lovers make good, hankie-wringing drama anytime, with extra resonance for American audiences added by the interracial aspect. (Radames is Egyptian, Aida is Nubian -- tribes that would appear virtually identical to us, were the former not played by an Anglo-European actor and the latter by an African-American actress). But the political situation in the Red Sea district circa 1400 B.C. means little to audiences nowadays (especially with co-author David Henry Hwang's input insuring against naive, "King And I" stereotypes).
What marks this for certain success when it hits Broadway in 2000 are Bob Crowley and Natasha Katz's sweeping panoramas of the Mysterious East, replicated onstage through the magic of cyc-and-silhouette projections, pin-spot beams and invocations of indigenous religious motifs -- spiced with a healthy dose of good 'n vulgar camp (chiefly in a number that has Nile valley girl Amneris and her girlfriends vogue-ing in the latest fashions) that makes us almost hope for a happy ending. Hey, this is 1999, not 1871 -- it could happen.
Heather Headley renders the title character a poster-girl for Oppressed Minorities the world over; Adam Pascal does what he can with the ambivalent Radames, and John Hickok's Zoser emerges as the most deliciously amoral villain since The Rocky Horror Show. But the most interesting character in this revisionist retelling is Sherie Rene Scott's Amneris, who grows from a spoiled rich girl to a compassionate young woman capable of ruling her father's kingdom. And, of course, there's John & Rice's eminently hummable pop-rock score, which includes just enough leather-lunged duets and patriotic anthems to plausibly foreshadow the lovers' unhappy fate.
