I was inside of a hydra head. Well actually, I was operating the hydra head, while Disney puppet specialist James Retter Duncan was coaching me through how to open and close the creature's gargantuan (though surprisingly light) mouth. As I hold on to the two levers of the head, Duncan tells me to push forward to close the jaw and pull back to open it. I pull back, the carbon fiber jaw opens; I give a meek roar for good measure. "Pretty cool, huh," Duncan tells me. It was.

The puppeteer's credits include War Horse on the West End and King Kong on Broadway, though these days, he's helping Disney Cruise Line develop puppets for its on-ship entertainment and train actors on how to become puppeteers. "When actors come to us, they’re triple threats. I like to think when they leave us, they’re quadruple threats," he remarks proudly.

It was a busy Monday in Toronto where, in the basement level of the CBC Building, Disney Cruise Line was deep in rehearsals for five different shows. Toronto is the home base for the entertainment division of Disney Cruise Line, and on the July day that I visited, with a group of other journalists, I was getting a behind-the-scenes look at their newest stage show: Hercules.

The 1997 Disney animated film is experiencing something of a revival, in the classical sense. A stage version is currently running in the West End. Meanwhile, Disney Cruise Line is getting ready to debut its newest ship, the Destiny, which will have a new stage version of Hercules onboard. The Disney Destiny will have its maiden voyage beginning November 20, when it sails from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to The Bahamas and Western Caribbean. 

While Disney Theatricals helms the Mouse's stage shows for Broadway, West End, and the regional theatre markets, it is the separate Disney Live Entertainment that creates stage shows for the cruise lines (the theme park shows are helmed by a whole other team).

Putting Hercules onstage is an epic undertaking—the West End version is the latest iteration of the musical, but there was a previous version with a different director that ran Off-Broadway and in New Jersey. Meanwhile, Disney Cruise Line previously had a Hercules: The Muse-ical stage show that it retired in 2008 after a nearly decade run. Yet overall, Hercules has made fewer stage appearances than Beauty and the Beast or Frozen.

Contrary to the song "Zero to Hero," where Hercules' "daring deeds are great theatre," the material is inherently challenging for theatre-makers to adapt. First, the film is a mishmash of styles: a heartfelt Grecian myth about a young man who needs to prove himself in order to become a god, mixed together with a gospel score and filled with '90s references (including NBA champion Michael Jordan). Second, there's the inherent design challenge of putting gods and monsters on the stage—how do you make titans and hydras that look menacing without going wildly over budget?

According to Jenny Weinbloom, the vice president of Disney Live Entertainment, the objective with the Hercules cruise show wasn't to take the film and plop it whole-cloth onto the stage. “That’s great, but that’s not what we do here. We’re interested in creating a spectacular night of theatre. Sometimes that means deviating from the material," she explains. "Our task is to take that story and take that music and reimagine it through a theatrical vocabulary.” She also calls the current West End Hercules "a delightful coincidence."

As someone who grew up down the street from Disneyland (and who worked there for a summer), I am more than familiar with the theme park stage shows—which tend to mirror the look and story beats of the films. So I was surprised, at the preview for Hercules, just how fast and free this adaptation was. Yes, there's a spectacular-looking hydras (with five moving heads) and titans that are up to 13 feet tall. Michael Curry—who designed the puppets for The Lion King on Broadway, and Frozen—designed the Hercules puppets, alongside Disney Entertainment Creative Director Jeff Conover.

But familiar characters have been made over. Similar to the current West End production, Hercules is played by a Black actor, Corey J. Bradford. His sidekick Pegasus is portrayed as a dancer who twirls and gallops while wearing an adorable set of wings. And instead of the traditional all-female quintet of Muses, there are now two male Muses. Co-director Marcel Williams characterizes this production's Muses as "Destiny's Child meets the Supremes."

Adds his brother (and co-director) Kevin Williams: "We opened our minds to be able to look at characters as individuals, or characters that we can all connect to. So it allowed us to add in two male muses, to bring in all different types of casting—which for us is really exciting, we get to do it in a fresh way.”

Pegasus is a particularly tricky character. In the current West End production and the previous stagings, the flying horse was cut entirely. Hercules producer Arin Dale admits figuring out how to portray Pegasus onstage was challenging. "When we did a workshop in New York, our original concept of Pegasus is he would be a puppet," she recalls. But then, the team had a light-bulb moment. "We had a dancer who really brought him to life, and the choices of that dancer made everyone rethink what Pegasus could be…He’s truly become one of my favorite characters in the show.”

Then, there's the score, which is no doubt what has helped Hercules endure for nearly three decades and what makes any stage adaptation particularly exciting. The Hercules film did not shy away from its many anachronisms. Instead, it leaned way into it—from references to Air Jordans to "hey buddy, wanna buy a sundial?"

This allows the creators of this new Hercules to put in their own contemporary flairs, such as adding a Destiny's Child "Say my name" reference into "Zero to Hero," infusing "Go the Distance" with a '90s R&B groove, or giving a Motown vibe to "I Won't Say (I'm In Love)."

There's an Easter egg for Hercules superfans, too. The song "Shooting Star," a ballad that composers Alan Menken and David Zippel wrote for Hercules that was replaced by "Go the Distance," has been reinstated for this new stage show (the song is also in the West End version). In this latest adaptation, "Shooting Star" is a duet between Hercules and love interest Meg "to compact the story of how their relationship comes together fast because we have limited time on a cruise ship," says music arranger Bradley Knight.

There have been cuts in order to accommodate the show's hour runtime (which is standard for Disney's cruises and theme parks). The opening sequence with Zeus and Hera has been cut. But Dale is confident that this version of Hercules will be loved by both fans and newcomers alike. “We do a really good job of staying true to the nostalgia of the film but maintaining a fresh and fun retelling of it.” 

So for those who cannot get to the West End to Hercules, you can go the (shorter) distance to Florida, beginning November 20. 

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Photos: Rehearsals for Hercules on Disney Destiny

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