Theater im Hafen

This guide to Theater im Hafen in Hamburg starts backstage on December 2, 2001, moments before the German premiere of Disney's The Lion King, the musical's first staging anywhere in Europe, inside a tented theater built on a former shipyard reachable only by ferry across the Elbe. It follows the a cappella opening that greeted that first audience and became a ritual still repeated whenever a new performer joins the cast. Look up at the tent roof, dyed a deep savanna yellow to turn a shipyard hall into something closer to open grassland.