Review: 'Aida’ is mix-match of styles that works

by Harold Duckett

Whether putting the creators’ names at the front of “Elton John and Tim Rice’s ‘Aida’ ’’ was good marketing strategy or a red flag that this “Aida” isn’t an opera becomes a moot point once the music starts.In the Broadway in Knoxville production playing this weekend at the Civic Auditorium, this “Aida” is a pop musical in the truest sense. The musical genres of rhythm and blues, gospel-flavored songs, love ballads and what is unmistakably John’s Crocodile Rock mix and match as fluidly as the costume styles and time warps.

What is clear is that this music belongs to this story and when Marja Harmon is on stage, there is no mistaking that she is Aida.

When she sings, the music radiates.

Of course, there is the contemporary pop music problem of too many words for the notes or too much music for the words, but Guiseppe Verdi’s 1871 Italian opera suffers from that, as well.

The story is about the royal army of the Egyptian pharaoh marching into Nubia (originally Ethiopia) to capture slaves to labor in the pharoah’s mines and building projects.

Led by Radames, the army unknowingly captures the Nubian princess, Aida.

As the pharaoh’s most trusted soldier, Radames is chosen to marry the Egyptian princess Amneris, who will take over the kingdom when her sick father dies.

Love stories being what they are, Radames falls in love with Aida instead. Amneris is a dumb blond who thinks her stylish clothing is what makes her a princess.

You can probably figure out the rest. In the end, Romeo and Juliet — er —Radames and Aida, as fate would have it, end up going to their deaths together.

As Amneris, the light-headed (in more ways than one) princess who finally gets shaken into reality, Leah Allers is dead on. In the beginning, she is a princess in the pop culture notion of the term. But in the end, her self-obsession is replaced by a decisive royal presence.

As Radames, Casey Elliott has the toned, bared body torso of a soldier, but duty does not determine all his calls.

Although there is a large cast of 26, most of whom stay in constant motion, either as soldiers or slaves, or as stage-hands moving props on and off, the show belongs to Harmon, Elliott and Allers.

Just like the musical styles, everything else about this “Aida” is mix and match, as well.

The nine-member orchestra, directed by Daniel Bailey, is made up of both electronic and acoustic instruments.

The set has elements that could have been stolen from an Egyptologist mixed with stuff that could be from Starbucks.

What more could one expect!