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"Finding Nemo: The Musical". I remember back in 2006 when I first heard those words and the complete confusion that accompanied them. Why on Earth would Disney decide to make a musical based on one of the few Disney movies that contain absolutely no musical numbers whatsoever? In my head it could only be a disaster; adding songs would change the entire tone of the story - it wouldn’t be Finding Nemo any more. There was a lot of worried discussion in the Disney fan community for that year before the show opened to the public. Eventually the doors did open and not long after word slowly began to spread around the internet... people were loving it.
Finding Nemo: The Musical is a forty minute show that is currently only performed in Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park in Orlando, Florida. It is a permanent attraction that replaced Tarzan Rocks! at the Theatre in The Wild and uses puppets to tell the story which is, naturally, heavily condensed from the original feature film. Nemo also has some pretty hefty stage credentials with Tony Award-winner Peter Brosius directing and Michael Curry who designed the puppets for the phenomenally successful Lion King musical (now the highest grossing Broadway show of all time) coming aboard as lead puppet and production designer. Finally, the brand new songs heard in the show were composed by husband and wife team Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, the Tony Award-winning team behind Avenue Q.
I finally got to see the show ten months after it opened; I’d heard a lot about it and seen multiple photos but I still wasn’t sure what to expect. Finding Nemo is one of my favourite Pixar films so watching an all new adaptation made me rather nervous as I didn’t want to see the story ruined. I needn’t have been concerned as the show was truly spectacular. The songs are absolutely perfect and blend so seamlessly into the story that you completely forget they’re not in the original. You can listen to some preview clips over at Amazon where you can buy the official album, I highly suggest listening to the clip from In the Big Blue World which is the total showstopper of the performance. The show is stunning visually as well, I wasn’t sure how distracting the puppeteers would be as they’re not disguised on stage yet after just a few minutes you found yourself only watching the puppets and forgetting about the humans scurrying around on stage operating them.
If you get the opportunity to visit Walt Disney World then I highly recommend building time for Finding Nemo: The Musical into your schedule. It makes a great break in your hectic theme park day (let’s be honest, forty five minutes sat in an air conditioned room feels like heaven on a hot Florida day) and is totally worth every second of its time. I can’t wait to go back!
