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AIDA's Heather Headley, Adam Pascal and Sherie Rene Scott on the evolution of their hit musical and the challenges of their roles

AIDA:
pyramids, no - triangles, yes

When Elton John and Tim Rice's AIDA lifted off in Atlanta, the launching pad was an all-purpose pyramid that revolved, changed shapes and overwhelmed stars and story alike. You'll find no such apparatus-or, for that matter, pyramid, period!-in Bob Crowley's stylistic redesign of the show now at the Palace.

Triangles, however, abound. The closest the show gets to a pyramid is at the top of Act 2 when laser beams connect the princess of Egypt, Amneris (Sherie Rene Scott), and her handmaiden, the captured princess of Nubia, Aida (Heather Headley), with the soldier they both love, Radames (Adam Pascal). Within that three-sided frameworks is a wealth of conflicts-the stuff of which legend, opera and, now, a Broadway musical are made.

Headley, a 25-year-old Trinidadian with a gorgeous voice, is quick to point out that even the central triangle has triangles:"There are all these tributaries running from the main triangle- Aida's relationship with her father and her people, Amneris's relationship with her father and her people- getting everyone involved, causing it to be more complicated than just a triangle."

Similarly, Radames's love for the slave he brings to his betrothed calls into question his loyalty to country. "I think the story deals a lot with the mind over the heart," says Headly. "Many times we decide,'This is the logical thing to do' because it's what our mind says to do, while our hearts are saying, 'But this is what makes me feel good.' S, we go with the mind because it's the right thing to do, or do we go with the heart because it feels good? I've had to look inward and ask myself a lot of questions doing this role."

Given the sacrifice Aida makes in the name of love, some of those questions go straight to the soul. "A couple of years ago, I lost a few people in my life ... It started me thinking about mortality. And doing this show has brought me even closer to the reality that I am not invincible. Aida made me question who, or what, would I die for. Would I die for love of country? Would I die for love of man? It's scary. I did ask myself that, and my list was not as long as Aida's."

Sherie Rene Scott, the only other principal player to survive the post-Atlanta overhaul, kiddingly calls herself Queen of the Musicals That Never Came In (Over and Over, Faust, et al.), but she's all for the bumps in the road AIDA found. "We learned a lot from what we did out of town. I don't think we would have brought it to the point where it is now without that experience. We couldn't quite go far enough at first, and that made us see we had to go all the way instead of pulling back. It's a show with powerful issues."

Amneris has always been a dimensional odd woman out, but the version that Scott plays comes with some ghostly echoes of Elton John's celebrity friends. In a woman who learns on her wedding night her husband loves someone else, it's possible to see Princess Diana. And in her campy fashion show-stopper ("My Strongest Suit"), there are shades of Gianni Versace. "It is not the typical other-woman scenario," understates Scott, "definitely not a third wheel in the modern sense of the word."

As the object of their royal affections, Adam pascal couldn't be happier. "To be caught between these two beautiful women-are you kidding me?- of course, I like it," he declares heartily. "I feel very lucky to have this role. Radames is much more of a character, for me as an actor, than Roger was in RENT. Roger wasn't really that much of a stretch, which was wonderful at the time because I wasn't that much of an actor then. The music and the content of Rent carried itself. I just had to physically put myself into the role, and he was there.

"This is much more of a character-from the way he stands to the way he talks to the way he looks. And trying to find sympathy for him was a big part of the Chicago production. He starts out a pretty evil guy-a slaver, a plunder, a thief-and he makes a huge character arc, ending up in a fully different place from where he started: a guy who falls in love with Aida and pays the price for that love."

Pascal's favorite moment in the show- a song called "Elaborate Lives"-has shifted throughout the three phases of AIDA. "In Atlanta," he relates, "it was in the form of a letter written by Amneris that Aida sang to Radames. In Chicago, it became a song that Aida just sang to Radames. However, as beautifully as Heather sang that song, it never made sense-textually or lyrically- for Aida to sing it to Radames. When they were revaping the show for Broadway and changing things around, they saw it would make so much more sense if he sang it to her, so now it has become my song."

And the triangle twirls on.

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