DISNEY’S TONY AWARD®-WINNING HIT MUSICAL ALADDIN
CELEBRATES 1ST ANNIVERSARY ON BROADWAY
Disney’s Aladdin, the Tony Award-winning new musical comedy based on the Academy Award®-winning animated film, celebrates one year on Broadway March 20th at the New Amsterdam Theatre (214 West 42nd Street).
Aladdin 1st Anniversary Cake by Beth Bennett of Bebe Bakes
In its first smash year, Aladdin has been seen by nearly three quarters of a million people and broken five New Amsterdam Theatre house records. Despite beginning performances eight weeks into 2014, Aladdin was the third highest-attended Broadway show of last year – only the juggernauts Wicked and The Lion King entertained more people – and finished 2014 as the fifth highest-grossing show of the year, the only new show of last season to make the top five.
Original stars Adam Jacobs (Aladdin), Tony Award nominee Jonathan Freeman (Jafar), Tony Award winner James Monroe Iglehart (Genie) and Courtney Reed (Jasmine) recently extended their contracts with the production through February 21, 2016. The four actors have led the “sublime” (NY1) Aladdin company since its pilot production at Seattle’s Fifth Avenue Theatre in the summer of 2011 and garnered critical acclaim when the Broadway production opened on March 20, 2014. Also continuing in their principal roles are original cast members Brian Gonzales and Jonathan Schwartz as Aladdin’s sidekicks Babkak and Omar, Clifton Davis as Sultan, Don Darryl Rivera as Iago, Merwin Foard as the standby for Jafar/Sultan and Steel Burkhardt, who recently joined the production as Kassim.