
The voices, however, cut out mid-chant, as Taymor picks the phone up at her home in Martha’s Vineyard, where she has spent the last 18 months cocooning herself from the public health crisis. Still, who could complain about being serenaded by a chorus of South African singers with a powerful message about “the circle of life moves us all, through despair and hope, through faith and love”? The song may be more than 25 years old, but there is deep resonance in it all the same. This is how they do it at Disney – even the holding music is promotionally themed.

Ingonyama nengw’ enamabala.” Waiting on the line for theatre and film director Julie Taymor to join the conference call, the score of The Lion King thrums down the line.
