David D’Lancy Wilson has spent 17 months as king of Pride Rock. That run ends Sunday, when the North American tour of “The Lion King” closes out its Detroit engagement at the Detroit Opera House.

Wilson joined the production in his native Toronto in 2024, taking on the role of Mufasa in the stage adaptation of Disney’s beloved 1994 animated film. When the show expanded its touring cast in November, Wilson moved with it, bringing the character to cities across the continent. Detroit was among the final stops.

For Wilson, landing the role carried weight that went beyond professional achievement. He grew up watching the animated film and understood what it represented.

“The animated film was in theaters while I was still a child,” Wilson said. “At that point in time, ‘The Lion King’ was one of the few Black stories that were being told. And as a father, being able to play Mufasa was something that I really couldn’t pass up.”

That last word matters. Wilson is a father of two boys, ages four years old and 17 months. The parallel between his life at home and the story he tells on stage every night is not lost on him.

“I have the honor of being a dad on stage and being a dad at home,” he said.

A role built on legacy

Playing Mufasa means stepping into the shadow of two towering figures. The late James Earl Jones voiced the character in both the 1994 animated film and the 2019 live-action remake, giving Mufasa a gravity and warmth that became inseparable from the character itself. Before Wilson, before any touring cast member, there was also Samuel E. Wright, who originated the role on Broadway when the stage production debuted in 1997. Wright, best known to many audiences as Sebastian the crab in “The Little Mermaid,” brought Mufasa to life for the first time in front of a live crowd.

Wilson is clear-eyed about what that lineage means.

“James Earl Jones being a person who popularized Mufasa and made him the way he is,” Wilson said. “It’s a huge honor being able to play a role that both of these gentlemen occupied at one point in time and have made so popular.”

But Wilson does not try to replicate either performance. His approach is rooted in his own experience of fatherhood. The production has also evolved the character over the years in a way that made Wilson’s personal connection even more fitting. Disney adjusted Mufasa’s age, making him younger than earlier interpretations of the role, to sharpen the tragedy at the story’s core.

“One of the beautiful tragedies that has been implemented is making Mufasa younger so that you really understand the tragedy behind the loss Simba is feeling,” Wilson said. “It’s not just that he lost his dad, but he lost a young dad at such a young age. And so, the hard thing to think about is, I can only imagine if my boys were to lose their father at such a young age, what that would do.”

That emotional access point, imagining his own sons in Simba’s position, is what Wilson draws on every night he walks out onto that stage.

A production that keeps running

“The Lion King” is not a newcomer to the stage. The Broadway production opened in 1997 under director Julie Taymor, whose visual approach transformed the animated story into something theatrical on its own terms. The first North American tour launched in 2002, and the show has not stopped since.

In the roughly 24 years since that tour began, the production has logged more than 10,000 performances across more than 90 cities and drawn more than 25 million theatergoers. That makes it North America’s longest-running and most-attended Broadway tour, a record that reflects not just nostalgia but genuine, sustained demand from audiences across generations.

Detroit has been part of that story before, and this spring engagement at the Detroit Opera House gave the city another chance to see the production in one of its finest venues. The Opera House, a longtime anchor for touring Broadway productions in the region, provided the kind of stage the show demands.

Wilson’s path to the throne

Wilson’s theater credits before “The Lion King” cover significant ground. He has appeared in “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” and “Hairspray,” productions that require very different registers, one built on spectacle and magic, the other on rhythm and social heat. That range speaks to a performer who has put in serious work before arriving at one of the most recognizable roles in touring Broadway.

He grew up in Toronto, which has a robust theater community and serves as a major market for large-scale productions. That foundation gave him access to training and opportunity that fed directly into the career he has built.

Taking the role of Mufasa also meant grappling with something specific to the character’s cultural significance. “The Lion King” remains one of the few major mainstream productions centered on a Black family and African imagery. For Wilson, who saw the film as a child during a period when those stories were scarce in mainstream entertainment, performing the role carries a responsibility he treats seriously.

What Detroit audiences saw

The production that came to the Detroit Opera House is the same one that has been refined over decades of performance. Taymor’s staging uses puppetry, masks, and physical theater techniques drawn from African and Asian theatrical traditions to create a visual language unlike anything else on tour. Actors wear elaborate costumes that double as animal puppets, operating them in full view of the audience as a deliberate theatrical choice rather than an attempt at illusion.

The score, featuring music by Elton John with lyrics by Tim Rice and additional compositions by Hans Zimmer, Lebo M, and Mark Mancina, is one of the most recognizable in musical theater. On stage, the arrangements are expanded and deepened, giving the material more space than the film’s runtime allowed.

For Wilson, the Detroit run represented an opportunity to connect with a city that has its own deep relationship with performance and culture. Detroit audiences have a reputation for showing up fully for live theater, and the Opera House engagements typically draw from across the metro region and beyond.

After Sunday

When the curtain comes down Sunday, Wilson will have logged 17 months in the role across two productions. That kind of sustained run with a single character is rare in touring theater, where casts rotate and contracts turn over. It means Wilson has had the unusual luxury of deepening his performance over time, finding new textures in scenes he has played hundreds of times.

What comes next for him has not been publicly announced. But the credits he has built, and the profile that comes with anchoring a production of this scale, put him in a strong position for whatever follows.

For Detroit audiences who have not yet caught the show, Sunday’s closing performance is the last chance. The Detroit Opera House is located at 1711 Woodward Ave. in Midtown. Ticket information is available through the venue directly.

The broader tour will continue to other cities after the Detroit run concludes, carrying the same story, the same music, and a cast shaped in part by the work Wilson put into the role over a year and a half. His version of Mufasa, built on the foundation Jones and Wright laid and filtered through his own experience of raising two young sons, will leave its mark on the production even after someone else takes the throne.