"As a kid, I was much more into Broadway musicals than I was into Disney," said Longbottom, who grew up to become a New York director and choreographer. "But Disney was a tradition at our house, and of course, I saw all the movies in their first run."

That youthful knowledge of the Disney musical canon came in handy when the Mouse House was looking for someone to put those old tunes on the stage, as it's done in a new production called "On the Record." The show comes to St. Paul's Ordway Center for the Performing Arts as part of its world-premiere tour.

The idea for the show came about when Longbottom was having lunch with Thomas Schumacher, who heads Disney's theatrical division. The company has successfully produced stage versions of its animated movie musicals "The Lion King" and "Beauty and the Beast." A version of "Mary Poppins" is previewing in London, and stage adaptations of "Tarzan" and "The Little Mermaid" are in the works.

But Disney was looking for a way to translate its vast and popular catalog of movie songs into a theatrical product. Longbottom was asked to take a crack at getting as many of those tunes as possible into one stageplay.

"Obviously, we knew it couldn't be a proper 'book' musical," he said. "That would have been six or eight hours long. And we didn't want it to be a revue, exactly. I wanted it to look like something I hadn't seen before."

The conceit: Longbottom, who co-conceived and directs the show, set the action of "On the Record" in a recording studio, where a group of singers is recording a double CD of classic tunes. While each character has his or her own set of issues to give the evening a dramatic arc, that arc never really develops into a full-blown plot.

The device, Longbottom said, "gives you people to follow, people who you will probably recognize and who might even be you." It also gives a context to "sing all of these songs without apology or context."

They don't sing all of the songs exactly. But in a little more than two hours, the show packs in some 64 songs from Disney's nearly seven decades of music — from "Snow White" and "Dumbo" to "Tarzan" and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." Some are heard in their entirety; others are represented in medleys like a "silly symphony" that gathers in a horde of Disney "nonsense songs" like "Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee" (from "Pinocchio") "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo" ("Cinderella") and "Hakuna Matata ("The Lion King").

Longbottom says it's a fairly encyclopedic compilation, one that should please most Disney fans. "I don't think anyone will come out of the theater saying, 'Oh, God … I wish they'd done this or that,' " he said.

Simply organizing all the music from decades' worth of composers from Richard and Robert Sherman to Elton John was a daunting task, Longbottom said.

"The trick was to come up with thematic sessions," he said. "So, first we started organizing the songs — songs about young love, songs about princes, songs about flying. Some fell off the table, some got put back on. And then, each of the numbers got a new musical spin. People are used to hearing these songs with a 64-piece orchestra; we've got an eight-piece ensemble."

Which is not to say Longbottom and his company have messed too much with tradition. They know they're dealing with people's cherished memories and proceed accordingly.

"This is seriously beautiful music," he said, "and I think we'll meet people's expectations. We haven't turned 'Bare Necessities' into a rap number or anything."

What: "On the Record"

When: Tuesday through Jan. 2

Where: Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, 345 Washington St., St. Paul

Tickets: $65-$20

Call: 651-224-4222