Saving face behind Lion King masks

Puppet supervisor Michael Reilly maintains the hundreds of masks and puppets that appear onstage in The Lion King, as well as director Julie Taymor’s designs.
Puppet supervisor Michael Reilly maintains the hundreds of masks and puppets that appear onstage in The Lion King, as well as director Julie Taymor’s designs.

Michael Reilly has one of the most important jobs with the national tour of Disney's The Lion King.

He's responsible for maintaining the integrity of the masks and puppets that are integral to the vision of director/costume designer/mask co-designer Julie Taymor as the show travels from town to town. The show stops in Memphis on Tuesday for a month-long run at The Orpheum.

Disney’s The Lion King

Tuesday-March 1. Showtimes: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday at The Orpheum, 203 S. Main St., Memphis. Music by Elton John, lyrics by Tim Rice; additional musical material by Lebo M, Mark Mancina, Jay Rifkin, Julie Taymor and Hans Zimmer; book by Roger Allers and Irene Mecchi, adapted from the animated Disney film. Special matinee 2 p.m. Feb. 26; no Sunday evening show March 1.

Tickets: $34-$149

(901) 525-3000

orpheum-memphis.com

His official title is "puppet supervisor," but "I prefer puppetmaster," he says. "If anybody should have the title, it should be me."

Reilly maintains, restores and occasionally rebuilds the masks and puppets. But he doesn't manipulate them onstage.

"I'm not a puppeteer," he insists, and never has been. "I'm strictly a backstage guy my whole career. I'm just not pretty enough."

Reilly will be in Memphis with the current tour of the Tony Award-winning show (Best Musical, Best Scenic Design, Best Costume Design, Best Lighting Design, Best Choreography and Best Direction of a Musical, two of those going directly to Taymor), which, starting Tuesday, will sit down for a month in Memphis' Orpheum Theatre.

Reilly's current stint with this tour has lasted a little more than a year, but "I've been with the show on and off since 1999. I took a three-year break in the middle. It's been a great run."

There are currently three Lion King tours -- one in North America, one in Great Britain and one in Japan. And the show is still running on Broadway.

The puppet/mask designs are the same, but "things change very slightly," Reilly says. "Every actor is different; not just in size, but sometimes somebody has certain injuries or something. You have to customize for every single actor." And every time there's a cast change, "we have to go through all the puppets they wear and customize them for the new person."

Reilly got his start in professional theater as a costumer. "I worked in wardrobe a lot since the late '80s, but I went to a technical school, so I learned how to fix cars and paint and do electrical work, all that crazy stuff, so any time something came up that was a little outside the box, I was always the go-to person. And Lion King is about as far out of the box as you can get.

"So when Lion King came about, I just interviewed for the job, and it was pretty clear that I was good fit."

Little Rock's Robinson Center Music Hall is undergoing massive renovations that will, among other changes, make possible larger shows on its stage than have heretofore been possible; The Lion King has been mentioned as an example of just such a show.

"I think we're the biggest tour going right now," Reilly says. "We just find a way to fit all of the things in there. We have 18 tractor-trailers of stuff; we've just gotta find a place to put it.

"We owe a big debt to Phantom of the Opera. When it went out it was then the biggest show, and they actually went to all these [theaters] and got them to blow out walls and renovate, and without their precursor renovations, we could never have been in a third of the houses we've been in."

Style on 02/01/2015

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