School spirit and an award-winning drama department might have drawn a capacity crowd to Shorecrest Performing Arts Center on opening weekend last weekend. But a splashy, flashy, street-hip version of Disney’s “Aladdin” kept them there and glad they were.

The story, of course, derives from “A Thousand and One Arabian Nights,” a collection of folk tales originating out of the Middle East and known to the world for centuries. It is the story of a homeless street kid who uncorks a genie out of a magic lamp and is granted three wishes. The original appeal these days would probably be to those among us who buy lottery tickets. The idea of getting something for next to nothing can fascinate to the point of fixation.

However, all of that only window-dresses the pop psychology driving this wild ride without wheels through a strange and ancient desert world.

The pop psychology is that of being who you are, as you are, and up front about it; a woman’s right to choose; and government of, by and for the people.

The world being transformed is a strange and ancient, desert world of dancing harem girls and starving beggars, a scheming minister and a fat and jolly but dictatorial sultan who rules by fiat including the marriage of his daughter.

And what brings it all together is energy with energy to burn and an attitude that won’t quit. The energy and the attitude generate out of a youth culture that is relationship-sophisticated, fast-talking, faster-moving and with it, hip and matching the world we are fast becoming. It is not particularly wise, certainly untested by experience and won’t be denied.

Yet, you can’t see it in action without laughing and forgetting yourself, feeling alive and wondering and believing if only for a moment: maybe anything is possible.

But see for yourself.

See Jake Mason’s face sticking out of a magic carpet, one that flies Rainer Golden and Shannon Denney through a starlit sky as the star-crossed lovers, Aladdin and Princess Jasmine.

See the black-and-red silk robes and headdress of last-minute stand-in, Bradley Reed, as the wicked and plotting, throne-aspiring Jafar.

And see and hear Allison Doyle as Jafar’s nasty-tempered, evil-cackling parrot, Iago.

And see what you think of blubber-bellied Jordan Towles as the tyrant Sultan. Towles is garbed with a sash in white silk, jacketed in glittering gold thread and topped off with a monster turban. Whether he is three vats of jelly packed into a pile of old clothes from a costume shop or just plain fast food out of control, you decide.

Also there are dancers dancing disco. There is a chorus line and free dance, snap-to-it guards to police the unruly populace and a baby elephant, life size. And there is gleam of the dust and sand of Agrabah’s city streets and the cold and dark of the caves where sinister Jafar stows his stolen gold and chains his enemies.

And there is the mature directing, still in touch with her childlike imaginativeness, of Linda Johnson.

So see it all. Hear it all.

But be advised.

You can’t without also taking in at the same time, the one in blue, the one who incorporates it all, the spirit of the whole shebang: Mario Orallo-Molinaro.

Orallo-Molinaro is the genie, the magic maker who grants his master three wishes save three. He won’t kill for you, make anybody love you or allow you to wish for more wishes. However, fame? Fortune? No problem. Want to be someplace else right now? Say the word. Anything other than the three exceptions, just ask.

Orallo-Molinaro jives and shucks and slips and slides and struts and glides. He raps like 8 Mile, slams like Snoop Dog. He’s Jim Carey and Robin Williams. He’s wrapped like a mummy in blue but grooves with the moves.

But mister magic is also a slave, a slave to his play station. He lives capped in a lamp till someone lets him out and then he has to do what he is told. Personal freedom’s his gig.

So does he get ever get free or not?

See for yourself what is in “Aladdin’s” lamp. Who knows? Maybe anything is possible. See “Aladdin.”