Julie Taymor and Michael Curry are indisputably the stars of the new Broadway musical version of The Lion King. They have produced costumes, masks, and puppets of such ingenuity and beauty that even the most jaded of viewers will not fail to be impressed by them. Rafiki, the baboon shaman who heralds the birth of the lion cub Simba at the beginning of the show, is artfully made up in a whimsical fur coat with what looks like a tambourine for a tail, her feet dominated by gigantic toenails and her face painted in a dazzling rainbow of shades. Antelopes whirr by like bicycles; stark, quiet giraffes move stealthily on stilts; an elephant as big as an elephant lumbers by. Bright splashes of clot[...]