The Lion King review – Disney’s Broadway juggernaut roars to life in Sydney

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Capitol theatre, Sydney With breathtaking aesthetics and joyous performances, the audacious adaptation – now almost 30 years old – is greater than the sum of its parts Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email The opening of The Lion King is a bona fide five-star moment that reminds you why this musical still rules the theatrical savannah. Forgoing the sentimentality of the 1994 film and the razzle-dazzle of its Broadway peers at the time, it taps into more primal, powerful delights. From its first incantation (translated as “All hail the king” – or “Look, a lion, oh my god”, depending on who you ask ), it builds with a chant, a gathering of human bodies, and finally a procession of animals that leaves the stage to come into the audience, enveloping you in a kind of choreographed ritual. (This is a good moment to check in on your date; if they’re not Having Feelings, they may be some kind of joyless ghoul.) This sequence encapsulates the best of the show: director Julie Taymor...
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Sasquatch Sunset review – Riley Keough and Jesse Eisenberg suit up for ingenious Bigfoot comedy

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Four mythical hairy creatures, communicating in grunts, inhabit what could be a post-apocalyptic world in the Zellner brothers’ witty and unnerving film

The Zellner brothers, David and Nathan, take their absurdism and futurism to the next level with a brilliant and radical comedy about the secret life of the legendary Sasquatch, AKA Bigfoot, creatures rumoured to be living in the North American wilderness. Sasquatch Sunset is a film to compare with Planet of the Apes, or Watership Down, or even the days of silent cinema. Nonverbal cinema anyway. It’s a plaintive, echoing wail of fear in that big empty forest where no one is around to hear a falling tree; fear of climate catastrophe, fear of the ongoing environmental destruction in which we don’t even fully know what’s getting destroyed; fear of humanity’s own extinction.

And as the movie begins, maybe humanity is already extinguished. We see four Sasquatch loping across a forest clearing: great, hairy, grunting, whooping, ape-like creatures: a female and three males, played without dialogue and in full prosthetic makeup by Riley Keough, Jesse Eisenberg, Nathan Zellner and Christophe Zajac-Denek. Two are in a couple and their sexual activity is observed impassively by the other two. One would-be dominant alpha appears to make a sexual move on another, having observed them in the midst of masturbatory self-discovery. He also bullies the others away from a blackberry bush he wants all for himself, on which he appears to get drunk and then hungover. Mushrooms are another dangerous stimulant. At moments of drama and stress they shriek and caper and clap their clenched fists together.

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