In 1992, James Monroe Iglehart’s mother took him to see the animated Disney movie “Aladdin” as a high-school graduation gift.
“When ‘Friend Like Me’ came on, I leaned over to my mom and said, ‘God, it would be so cool to do something like that,’ ” he tells The Post.
He then bought the soundtrack on cassette tape. When that wore out, he bought another.
Now, more than two decades later, Iglehart’s covered in glitter and sitting on the couch in his dressing room backstage at the New Amsterdam Theatre, where he’s starring as the Genie in the Broadway version of “Aladdin” (in previews now and opening March 20).
“The sparkles will be with me for the rest of my life. They never go away,” he jokes. “It’s in the contract, I had to say yes to that.”
The eccentric, boisterous Genie marks the actor’s splashiest role to date. A California native, Iglehart entered the world of performance with high-school show choir, where he met his future wife, Dawn. Now 39, he made his Broadway debut in 2007 as a replacement in “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” before landing the breakout role of Bobby in “Memphis.”
With “Aladdin,” Disney staged test runs in Seattle and Toronto last year before the show moved to 42nd Street.
“The character has changed, in that it’s becoming more tailored to me,” says Iglehart. “The Genie, as my wife likes to say, is me with the volume turned up to 11.”
Though Robin Williams famously voiced the Genie as a wild master of impersonation in the film, the stage creators were looking to go back to legendary lyricist Howard Ashman’s original concept, which imagined the wishmaker as a sort of Cab Calloway type. So Iglehart’s version doesn’t have blue skin, he doesn’t shape-shift and he’s not doing Jack Nicholson or Arsenio Hall voices.
“I’m not stepping into Robin’s shoes,” says Iglehart. “We’re actually re-
creating the character. But you want to stay Genie-esque. You still want him to be funny and quick and pop into different characters.”
The result is a scene-stealing, Oprah-quoting Genie that’s at once familiar and fresh — and one who regularly earns a standing ovation for his mid-act show-stopper “Friend Like Me.”
Though he admits to loving the applause, Iglehart says the role was a wish come true for other reasons. He cites the Genie as his all-time favorite Disney character. When he and his wife went to Walt Disney World for their honeymoon and could hardly afford to eat, Iglehart made sure to bring back a souvenir: a basketball jersey that reads “Genies” as the team logo. He wore it at the first reads in Seattle, Toronto and New York, as well as during tech rehearsal two weeks ago. It’s perfectely at home inside his dressing room, which houses several Genie dolls, toys and trinkets.
And the part also comes with a bonus.
“I was told not to lose too much weight because they like me big,” the actor says, noting that he had a much harder time getting roles as a skinnier fellow in his 20s.
“Then, as my dad likes to say, the Iglehart gene kicked in,” he adds, with a laugh. “Also, Taco Bell had this really, really cool thing where you could buy six tacos for like $7.”