Lion King Monte Casino

• 2Theatres at Montecasino

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Montecasino

Montecasino first opened its doors on 30 November 2000, basically consisting of Pieter Toerien's Theatre & Studio and expanded in May 2007 with the addition of the open-air Piazza - including the large new performance venue, The Teatro.

Montecasino's Piazza, which is slightly smaller than a rugby field and modeled on a typical Italian piazza features several restaurants where visitors can dine al fresco, and enjoy the mesmerizing musical fountain displays. The Piazza also features the SunSquare Hotel, aimed at the modern business tourist, the Montecasino Ballroom which can accommodate 400 people seated banquet style, and the spectacular Teatro at Montecasino, which opened with the legendary stage production The Lion King.

Theatres at Montecasino

Montecasino is a leisure and casino complex in Fourways, Sandton in Gauteng, South Africa. It was designed by American company Creative Kingdom Inc. And built by South African architects Bentel Associates International at a cost of R1.6 billion. Address: Montecasino, Cnr William Nicol Drive & Witkoppen Road, Fourways, Sandton, Gauteng Tel: 011 511-0244.

Montecasino has two theatres – Pieter Toerien's Main Theatre & Studio and The Teatro. Past performances at both theatres have included: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat, Lord of the Dance, The Merchants of Bollywood, Chicago - The Musical, Beauty and the Beast, High School Musical, Dirty Dancing, as well as the Jozi Comedy Festival.

Pieter Toerien's Theatre & Studio

Lion King Montecasino Times

Pieter Toerien's Theatre & Studio opened at Montecasino with Defending the Caveman in November 2000.

Lion King Monte Casino &

The Teatro

Also billed as The Teatro at Montecasino, this venue is acoustically designed for large scale musical productions and it can accommodate 1 870 people at full capacity. Despite the vast number of seats, the Teatro has an unmistakable intimacy and no seat is further than 33 metres from the stage. The Teatro was constructed at a cost of over R100 million by Tsogo Sun Gaming and is one of the 10 largest Lyric theatres in the world.

The venue opened its doors in May 2007 with a production of The Lion King (co-produced by Lebo M and Pieter Toerien), that played to packed audiences for 36 weeks, making South African history when it broke all box office records in South Africa, with over 550 000 people watching the show. This Disney musical is the longest-running and most successful show in South African theatre history. The show also received the distinction of being awarded the Best Production of a Musical category in the 2007 Naledi Awards, and Tsogo Sun Gaming was recognised for their contribution to the arts when it received the BASA Award for First Time Sponsor for the construction of the Teatro.

Since The Lion King closed in February 2008, the Teatro has played host to other local and international productions. , including

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Lion King Monte Casino Atlantic City

Janita and I went to watch the Lion King musical at Monte Casino last night and were blown away by an absolutely outstanding performance!

This international musical production is presented by a completely South African cast and has many local twists from nuances of the languages (including Afrikaans) to comments such as “it looks like a curtain from the Oriental Plaza”). The show is immensely entertaining and often incredibly funny. The show actually contains a few extra scenes that the original movie did not, but in general it sticks faithfully to the original and even the lines are mostly the same.

The above image of the opening scenes of the musical is taken from the City of Johannesburg website and is from an article written by Lucille Davie, entitled “The Lion King comes to Joburg“. The title of the source image is “Giraffe and lion met in Africa” but I must say that Janita and I thought the creature was a cheetah, not a lion. It was definitely my favorite creature of the night. The head was linked to the actress’ head with wires and when the actress moved so did the cheetah. It was really awesome to watch her “clean” herself (looked like a typical cat).

During the interval I glanced into the orchestra pit and was rather amazed. I am a flautist and have played in a few musicals and consequently been in a few orchestra pits in my life but I have never seen anything like the pit last night. The sheer amount of electronic gadgetry down there together with the classical orchestral instruments was quite staggering.

Lion King Monte Casino Hotel

A second picture from the article shows Gazelles flying through the air. The way the animals formed part of the actors and actresses was incredible. Also in this picture is the monkey Rafiki who was played to perfection. To me, one of the most amazing scenes was the wildebeest stampede which was incredibly well done and very successfully conveyed the impression of millions of wildebeest stampeding towards the audience.

I would love to see it again (but unfortunately the tickets are a tad on the pricey side) so for now I’ll have the memories of a fantastic show and next time I won’t be so reluctant about going to see something like this.

Roar!