‘Aladdin’ rides that magic carpet to the FICA stage on Tuesday

In the desert kingdom of Agrabah, the dreams are robust. The street rat chases success while a genie pines for freedom. A princess wants her voice to be heard, while a villain schemes to take over the throne.

It’s a plot familiar to anyone who grew up on the 1992 animated Disney classic “Aladdin” (or to their parents, who can still sing much of “Prince Ali” after endless viewings of the film).

In 2011, a musical adapted from the film debuted on Broadway, featuring songs from the original motion picture soundtrack, three songs written by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman for the film but ultimately cut, along with four new songs.

For the actor playing the titular character on the current U.S. tour, which comes to Spokane on Tuesday for an eight-show run, there is a built-in nostalgia for the show, but plenty of new stuff to make it worthwhile.

And it goes beyond Iago being a human, not a bird, and the genie not being blue.

“The musical version has brought some depth to the characters that wasn’t in the movie,” said Adi Roy, who has been playing Aladdin for the past eight months.

In particular, he points to Jasmine, the princess of Agrabah.

“I feel like they’ve given Jasmine a little bit more agency,” he said. In terms of his character, Aladdin has a deeper story line in the Broadway show, with the addition of a ballad at the beginning called “Proud of Your Boy.”

“He basically is speaking to his late mother, and he’s saying, ‘Look, I know you knew me as a street rat and a no-good, but I want to become better. I’ve hit the low point in my life and I realize I have to go up from here, or I’m going to stay exactly what you thought of me, and I’m not going to be anything better.’ ”

Of course, the iconic performance in the film “Aladdin” belongs to Robin Williams, whose performance as the Genie set a gold standard for voice work. “Aladdin” director John Musker credits Williams’ performance for the film’s longevity, saying in a 2022 interview with Yahoo News, “If it was just comedy, I don’t think it would’ve endured, but because he really got that feeling of his big heart, sweetness, his concern for Aladdin, their friendship and his investment in Aladdin’s future across, it’s one of the keys of the film’s longevity.”

Rather than put an actor in a genie suit for the Broadway version, producers instead cast actors who have that same energy that Williams brought to the role.

“Robin Williams so well switches from character to character and from trope to trope,” Roy said. “And so they found people, like the person who does it in our show, Marcus Martin, is wonderful at doing that. He can switch from comedy style to comedy style, or from musical style to musical style. He’s been working at this since he was I think 16, and he’s 26 now. He’s mastered the art, in my opinion.”

This tour cast is on the younger side, and Roy believes he and Senzel Ahmady are the youngest Aladdin and Jasmine to have been cast. “We’re bringing two different Aladdins and Jasmines to the show that you might not have seen. I feel like it is much more close to the film, because they were both very young in the film. You see more of that naivete and innocence in both of us.”

Young doesn’t necessarily mean inexperienced. Roy came to “Aladdin” from the Broadway cast of the Alainis Morrisette musical “Jagged Little Pill.”

While they are vastly different shows, they have one thread in common: nostalgia.

“Audiences were not all too dissimilar, just in the sense of a lot of people were coming for the nostalgia factor with ‘Jagged Little Pill’ and a lot of people are coming for the nostalgia factor with ‘Aladdin.’

“But yes, there are many more kids coming to ‘Aladdin’ than were coming to ‘Jagged Little Pill,” he added .