In the Elton John and Tim Rice musical Aida, the national tour of which is playing the Fox Theatre in St. Louis through May 6th 2001, the triangle and its three-dimensional extension the pyramid are recurring images. That's appropriate for two reasons: first, the dramatic heart of the show is that old standby the romantic triangle and second, Aida is an effective but superficial musical that only occasionally takes on that third dimension.
As in the 1871 Verdi opera on which it's loosely based, Aida is the story of the Egyptian captain Radames who, although pledged to marry the Egyptian princess Amneris, falls in love with the captured Nubian princess Aida, with tragic results. That's about all that survives from the original, however. Even the tragic ending, with Aida and Radames condemned to death by being sealed in a tomb, is given a happy wrapper by way of some mumbo-jumbo about reincarnation. This is a Disney show, after all.
That doesn't mean it's for kids, though. Despite moments of comic relief like the colorful production number "My Strongest Suit", a somewhat irrelevant parody of high fashion in which Nile Valley Girl Amneris revels in her own superficiality, Aida is fundamentally a dark story of mistaken love and conflicting loyalties played out against the bright, highly saturated colors of Bob Crowley's sets and costumes. Even the dramatic lighting design, by Natasha Katz, makes creative use of darkness as well as illumination.
In fact Aida, like a lot of recent musical theatre, is all about the Big Gesture. Simone's performance in the title role is the perfect illustration of this. When she takes center stage in dramatic solos like "Easy as Life", in which she laments the hard choices she must make to save her father, her larger-than-life performance and soaring vocals command attention. Like everything else in the show, including Wayne Cilento's highly eclectic choreography, it skirts the boundary between high drama and high camp without ever slipping over.
Patrick Cassidy's Radames operates on the same level of intensity. His duets with Simone generate an appropriate amount of heat and their reprise of the ballad "Enchantment Passing Through", as they're sealed inside the pyramid, may actually bring a lump to the throat. It's as close as the show ever gets to real emotion. There's also great work here from Kelli Fourneir as Amneris, convincingly making the transition from airhead to sadder but wiser heir to the throne.
Amneris is the only character with any real depth, however. For all their passion, Radames and Aida didn't seem terribly real to me and the production as a whole struck me as slick, entertaining, but ultimately a bit empty - rather like a two-dimensional triangle trying to become a three-dimensional pyramid but never quite succeeding.
Aida will be playing the Fox Theatre through May 6th and you can order tickets at 314-534-1111.