Final curtain for Elton John's Aida

Disney's Aida is pulling down its pyramid and leaving Broadway. The pop musical version of the ancient Egyptian love triangle, which features a score by Elton John and Tim Rice, will close September 5 at the Palace Theatre after 1,852 performances. "We have had a great run--it will have been 4-1/2 years," Thomas Schumacher, out president of Disney Theatrical Productions, said Tuesday in a telephone interview with the Associated Press. "We have recouped, made money, and launched an international franchise." Yet Schumacher said he didn't want Aida to face the gloomy box-office months of September, October, and early November, when business is generally poor. "I'd lose all the money I'll make during the summer," he said. The show, which currently stars rhythm and blues star Deborah Cox in New York City, also has productions playing in Germany and Japan. The international tour will begin in 2005, Schumacher said. According to Schumacher, the New York edition has grossed over $150 million, generating more than $12 million in profits and has been seen by over 2.5 million people. Aida, which originally starred Heather Headley, tells the story of a Nubian princess and her love for a handsome Egyptian soldier, Radames, who is also loved by the Egyptian princess Amneris. Headley was followed in the title role on Broadway by Maya Days and a series of pop stars including Simone, Toni Braxton, Michelle T. Williams, and now Cox. Schumacher said that Adam Pascal, the musical's original Radames, will rejoin the show in late June for the remainder of its run. Aida has had something of a Cinderella life on Broadway. It opened to mixed reviews in March 2000 and wasn't nominated for a best musical Tony Award that season, so it didn't get a musical number on the Tony telecast. Yet the production managed to become the longest-running show of that season, outlasting all the 2000 best-musical nominees: Contact (the eventual winner), The Dead, Swing, and The Wild Party. And it won four Tony Awards--for Headley, for its score, its sets, and lighting. When Aida closes, Disney will still have two shows on Broadway--Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King. And it has two major productions in the works, one to debut in London and the other on the road. Mary Poppins, a joint venture with Cameron Mackintosh, opens December 15 at the Prince Edward Theatre in London. It will star Laura Michelle Kelly as everyone's favorite nanny. Kelly is currently on Broadway as Tevye's second daughter in the revival of Fiddler on the Roof. Schumacher will also have On the Record, a new musical celebrating songs from Disney movies, touring the country next season. "The show is set in a fantasy recording studio--the recording of the ultimate two-disc Disney compilation," Schumacher said. "There's no spoken dialogue but it definitely tells a story." On the Record already has had a reading in New York with a workshop planned in two weeks. The production, directed, choreographed, and coconceived by Robert Longbottom, opens at the Palace Theatre in Cleveland on November 9. The Walt Disney Company currently faces a boycott over the corporation's decision not to allow Miramax to distribute Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 911, which examines the ties between the family of President Bush and Saudi Arabia's royal House of Saud. Disney CEO Michael Eisner expressed concern that releasing the film could jeopardize tax breaks the company receives for its theme parks in Florida, where Jeb Bush is governor.