Eva Context Vs The Lion King

Stage musicals are risky business ventures, but can garner mass appeal and subsequently big profits (The Economist 2013). Musicals attempt to attract a wide audience by interpreting universal stories or emotions, often looking to high culture source texts that contend with real events.

The Lion King is considered the highest grossing musical (Johnson 2014). While based on the Disney film, it clearly utilises the narrative of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and encapsulates such themes as mortality, identity and family. Consider also, the adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables; “the world’s longest-running musical” (WestEndTheatres.com 2015), the adaption of Puccini’s Madam Butterfly into Miss Saigon and Evita based on the life of Eva Perón.

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This highlights the difference in audience experience and participation. Theatre is claustrophobic; the audience must bear witness to actors upon the stage and the “concentration of locations” (McMillin 2006, p.174) and narrative into one space. The cinema, however, has cemented its place as being a social event, much like the In Bloom neighbourhood competition that the poster references with the use of cheerful, cartoon flowers. The poster is also somewhat nostalgic; the title anchor (Barthes 1967) is set as a traditional road-name signpost, signifying the construct of the concept of community, even a nationalistic idea of home referenced in the lyric sung by the residents, “we hoped it was an immigrant” (London Road 2011; London Road

The audience is forced to decide whether it is something that appeals by assessing their own experience and knowledge of The National Theatre. The logo font signifies the brand of The National Theatre referencing the Brutalist structure of its home venue on the South Bank and with it, the vérité remit of the company (The National Theatre 2015c).

The “hypertext” (Genette 1997, p.5) poster does not feature The National Theatre logo, but the phrase, “a film based on the groundbreaking National Theatre production” (National Theatre 2015d) printed in the same font as the “hypotext” (Genette 1997, p.5) title, consolidating The National Theatre brand. While this phrase appears to act as the film’s tagline, it does nothing to surmise the film. “The movie tagline is the film’s advertising slogan” (Mahlknecht 2015, p.414), and here the decision has been made to market the film as a direct companion to the “hypotext” (Genette 1997, p.5).

London Road being both being a musical and a production from The National Theatre would suggest a need for a wide audience. The semiotics of both posters identifies an audience with a chain of significance referred from the London Road title