Honestly, we already HAVE the film, so I don't want the show to just end up being the film all over again on stage plus padding to make it a 'full-length' show. No, this should go back to Howard Ashman's original vision. It was his baby, his dream project! This would be a perfect tribute to him, and maybe finally give him a posthumous Tony for lyrics. They need to stay as faithful to that version as possible, considering they have a back catalog of 13 songs he and Menken wrote for the original draft. They are:
Arabian Nights
Bakak, Omar, Aladdin, Kassim
Proud of Your Boy
Call Me a Princess
Arabian Nights (Reprise 1)
Arabian Nights (Reprise 2)
Friend Like Me
Prince Ali
How Quick They Forget
Humiliate the Boy
Arabian Nights (Reprise 3)
High Adventure
Arabian Nights (Final Reprise)
Plus, from the film:
One Jump Ahead (Its reprise wouldn't really be needed if Proud of Your Boy is back in. Proud of Your Boy is the big emotional point. The reprise is Proud of Your Boy-lite, in my opinion.) and, of course, A Whole New World.
Jafar's deleted song Why Me, by Tim Rice, (which seems to have been inserted into the scene where Jafar & Iago are discovering who the 'diamond in the rough' is, at least according to a video I saw of the Seattle production...) seems like it's pretty much in.
I think they should nix Jafar's Prince Ali reprise for Humiliate the Boy (to tie back into it being a sort of call-back to Proud of Your Boy) all they'd have to do to make that work is get rid of the Genie's three-wish limit and change it back to what it was in the original Arabian nights tale: unlimited wishes. This would, I think, in addition to restoring Howard Ashman's last written song ever, give us a more satisfying ending with Aladdin freeing the Genie.
So, this show is pretty much all ready to go. It doesn't NEED any additional songs. Ideally the song-line-up would look a little something like this:
Arabian Nights
One Jump Ahead
Babkak, Omar, Aladdin, Kassim
Proud of Your Boy
Call Me a Princess
Arabian Nights (Reprise 1)
Why Me
Arabian Nights (Reprise 2)
Friend Like Me
Prince Ali
How Quick They Forget
A Whole New World
Humiliate the Boy
Arabian Nights (Reprise 3)
High Adventure
Arabian Nights (Final Reprise)
-That's 16 total songs, and the overall story isn't TOO shaken up or unrecognizable from the film, while still harkening back to Ashman's original intent. They HAVE to use all of his songs, though. They're simply to good to let rot.
The only differences would be changing the Genie's limit on wishes, taking Abu out, since there isn't a feasible way to incorporate him onstage, and replacing him with the original friend characters Bakak, Omar and Kassim, and restoring the Narrator back to the original idea of having him sort of be a character who keeps cropping up and narrating story-developments through reprises of Arabian Nights.
