Applause

After years of missing the opportunity, last week we finally got to see the stage version of the Lion King.
A friend told me it was worth seeing, if only for the opening sequence. In a way he was right, although I enjoyed the spectacle and the dancing and so on. But for me it was the African elements that really held me in thrall.

Ah Africa, how potent is your spell! In the days when I was at school in England, I used to fly home at the end of June to spend a couple of months in Johannesburg in winter. Or should I have written 'hop' rather than 'fly'? The plane would land in Paris, Rome or Athens, Cairo, Khartoum, Nairobi (somewhere further south like Entebbe maybe?) Salisbury (now Harare) and finally, home. At each stop, we'd exit and spend an hour or so in the airport building. The amazing thing was, the moment the door of the plane opened and I stepped out into the air, I could smell it... Africa, the earth of a different continent.

So we enjoyed the Lion King, even though the performance was kind of patchy. At the end, the audience all rose to their feet to show their appreciation. A visiting South African friend sat next to me. She turned to me in astonishment. 'Yes,' I said, 'this happens almost always'.

Afterwards I wondered, why is applause not enough? Didn't we used to gauge the success of a performance by the number of curtain calls. And are we devaluing the chance to recognize truly outstanding performances by automatically getting to our feet when the show is over?