★★

It’s amazing just how involving The Lion King is on stage. The lack of actual, or, indeed, believable, lions on stage matters less in this context than the ability of the actors to speak to the emotional truth of the characters they are playing. Through the abstracted masks and feathers, the circle of life lives. There’s a joke on this matter in the latter half of Mufasa, Disney’s financially viable follow up to Jon Favreau’s 2019 photoreal remake of the original 1994 Lion King. A Billy Eichner voiced Timon snarks his distaste for the show on the basis of his part being played by a sock puppet. That’s the joke. To this there is only one response. Mufasa’s Timon may look exactly the part of the meerkat he is but he hasn’t half the warmth, humour and soul of the sock.