Meet the composer who put the horrors into the Little Shop and who’s now polishing up Aladdin’s lamp.

You may not know his name, but with eight Academy Awards, eleven Grammys, seven Golden Globes and a Tony in his trophy cabinet, you will almost certainly know Alan Menken’s music, particularly if you are a Disney fan. Menken has written the scores for a slew of Disney movies including The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Enchanted, several of which have subsequently made it to the musical theatre stage. With Aladdin landing its magic carpet at Sydney’s Capitol Theatre this month, Menken joined Thomas Schumacher, the President and Producer of Disney Theatrical, to meet with a handful of Australian media in New York late last year.


Alan Menken at the piano

In a subterranean room at the New Amsterdam Theatre, where the Broadway production is now into its third year, the two of them banter together like an old comedy double act as they discuss the long and sometimes painful genesis of the show, based on the hugely popular 1992 animated film...