Phindile Mkhize as Rafiki in that little-show-that-could, The Lion King. Photo by Joan Marcus.

Drama lovers, a word: Here in the lavishly appointed ahr-eee Theater cubicle of DCist’s state-of-the-art underground headquarters, we have what you call an ethos. For us, casting arbitrary, semi-informed judgment on the bustling stage traffic of Our Nation’s Capitol is about a lot more than just getting free tickets to the latest hot offering from reliable companies like Catalyst or Solas Nua or Rorschach. No, here at DCist, we’re all about standing up for the little guy; the scrappy innovator, the lonely torch-bearer of the avant garde, the little-shows-that-could -- and just might! -- if only they can find a sympathetic critic to champion them.

With all that in mind, the time has come to talk of The Lion King, a modest and unassuming little crowd-pleaser of a musical that you can just bet will have audiences of all ages smiling through Labor Day, even though it closes Aug. 24. The entire eight-week run sold out before it opened. This must be some show!

Why, yes, matter-o-fact. It is some show.

And of course, the juggernaut that pulled into the Kennedy Center last week is small perhaps only compared to the original Broadway version (full disclosure: haven't seen it), which had an entire theater built to its specifications when it opened in 1997. It scooped up a boatload of Tony Awards, for Best Musical, Scenic Design, Costume Design, Choreography, and for Julie Taymor’s direction. More than a decade later, it continues to fill seats off of Times Square.

Spectacle, of course, is what people are paying for, and on that level, the The Lion King -- and I mean the touring version now, the one in our town -- absolutely delivers the goods. Taymor’s ingenious costumes/puppets (they're often one and the same) will have you squinting your eyes to discern the actors’ limbs from the mecha. The way the lions' masks hover like headdresses but descend over the actors' faces when they crouch down into a combat stance? Way cool. When the armies of elephants charge down the aisles while drummers on either side of the stage pound out a primal rhythm, you feel the charge down to your toes. And that's just the opening number.

The sheer size of the thing can’t help but blunt the emotional impact of the story a bit, but hey, you already saw the movie, right? It's certainly no fault of the cast, who manage to not get played by their elaborate wardrobe, which can't be easy. Tony Freeman's turn as Zazu, loyal majordomo to King Mufasa, is particularly strong, as is Mark Shunock's Timon, the neurotic meerkat originally voiced by Nathan Lane. I haven't seen the 1994 film on which the show is based since, er, 1994, but it does seem the cast here have been directed to replicate the movie versions of their characters as closely as possible. So it's all the more admirable when they manage to invest them with some life.

Timothy Carter's villainous Scar is vocally the spitting image of the movie's Jeremy Irons, but visually he recalls an older filmic antecedent: Toshiro Mifune, star of Akira Kurosawa's mighty samurai epics. Scar, of course, is a scheming, traitorous coward who knows nothing of Bushido, the ancient Japanese warrior's code that governed Mifune's behavior in The Seven Samuari and Yojimbo and all the others -- but the probably unintentional visual echo helps keep this thing from feeling too slavishly duplicative of the film.

This stage version tacks an hour onto the movie’s 90-minute running time, and there’s no expansion of the story to speak of; just more music. The songs original to the stage version (by various combinations of Lebo M., Mark Mancina, Jay Rifkin, Taymor, and Hans Zimmer) seem less memorable than the Elton John/Tim Rice numbers from the film (all of which are reprised here in earthier, more percussive arrangements), but maybe that’s just the effect of the movie songs’ decade-and-a-half of cultural ubiquity.

But to compare this too closely to the movie would be a mistake. A stage musical is a different animal, after all. This one is a different collection of animals. I liked the giraffes and the cheetahs best.

Does all this impressive artistry add up to art? Maybe. At the very least, it's a fair-trade blockbuster.

The Lion King (about two hours, 40 minutes, including one 15-minute intermission) is at the Kennedy Center through August 24th. Sold out; good luck on the secondary market.