When "Cats" opened in September 1989, it was the first major national tour to play the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts, and the Anchorage Daily News called it "the biggest evening of theater in Alaska history." 29,000 Alaskans saw the show during its two-week run.

Five years later, another Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, "Phantom of the Opera," set a new bar for theater events in Alaska; its four-week engagement in the fall of 1994 sold approximately 55,000 tickets.

Then came the king.

Disney's "The Lion King" rolled into Anchorage in August, and while it doesn't roll back out until Oct. 11, it's already sold more than any show in the center's 21-year history, according to ACPA president and chief operating officer Nancy Harbour.

“The Lion King” runs through Oct. 11 at the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts in Anchorage. Tickets, $25 to $70, at (907) 263-2787 or www.centertix.net.

"Everything about the show has broken records," she said.

But other than providing Alaskans with an evening of entertainment, what kind of effect does a show like "The Lion King" really have on the community?

To begin with, it has "a huge cultural impact," according to Jason Hodges, executive director of the Anchorage Concert Association.

"We get to expose the community to that kind of broadly-appealing entertainment," Hodges said. "To be honest, lots of communities don't get to experience that."

"The Lion King" is the kind of show in which diverse audiences can find common ground, Hodges added.

"All those barriers" -- political, socioeconomic, cultural -- "seem to disappear when you're having that shared experience."

At the same time, national tours haven't been universally welcomed by the Anchorage performing arts community. One of the complaints local arts groups have voiced about Outside productions is that they rob from local audiences. In 1995, as the Anchorage Concert Association prepared to close its season with the national tour of "Camelot," Marty Decker, then director of the now-defunct Alaska Festival Theatre, expressed his frustration to the Anchorage Daily News:

"These shows come exactly on top of three of the four shows in our season ... I believe in the right (of) Alaskan performing artists to use that performing arts center downtown, and to me it would be a sacrilege if it just became a roadhouse."

Despite its long run, however, "The Lion King" arrived early in the season, and it hasn't overlapped with many local productions.

Sandy Harper is the producing artistic director of Cyrano's Theatre Company, one of the few local groups that's had a show competing with "The Lion King." Cyrano's world premiere of "The Big One," Dick Reichman's chronicle of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, closed this weekend. Harper said "The Lion King" didn't seem to have any negative impact on ticket sales for "The Big One," although she pointed out that Reichman's play has a specific local appeal. She added that the national tour has been "very generous" with outreach to the local arts community.

"It gave all kinds of opportunities to local theater professionals, especially technicians," Harper said. One of those was Cyrano's stage manager, who had the chance to shadow the stage manager for "The Lion King" and see how a major production is managed.