Hull New Theatre – until 1st June 2019
Reviewed by Catherine McWilliams
4****
Madagascar The Musical is based on the much loved Dreamworks film Madagascar, following a bunch of friends from New York’s Central Park Zoo as they go in search of the wild.
Marty the Zebra (Antoine Murray-Straughan) is having a 10th birthday, together with a midlife crisis as he has never seen the wild and has become tired of performing the same old routine for the visitors to the zoo. His friends Alex the Lion (Matt Terry), Melman the Giraffe (Jamie Lee-Morgan) and Gloria the Hippo (Timmika Ramsay) try to persuade him that life is good in the zoo and that he doesn’t need to see the wild, but Marty is unconvinced as they could go and see the wild and “be back by morning and no one will ever know”. That night he escapes from the zoo to go to Grand Central Station to catch a train to Connecticut (the wild) and chaos ensues as his friends set out to bring him back. As a parallel story the penguins are also tunneling out of the zoo in their bid to return to Antarctica. Eventually our heroes Alex, Marty, Melman and Gloria end up on Madagascar where they meet King Julien (Jo Parsons) and things begin to go a little awry.
This is a fun filled night out, wonderful songs and performances, the costumes are fabulous and the puppets are incredible. Aside from the 5 main characters all the other animals are puppets, initially I was a little worried as you could see the operators but they became part of the animal and it was the animal you watched, outstanding. Incredibly all the puppets had real character too, from the penguins to the lemur. What astonished me as well was how few members of the cast there were when they took the curtain call, the puppeteers doubling as other cast members, a wonderfully talented ensemble.
Matt Terry was a fabulous Alex, he has a beautiful voice and his relationship with Marty (Antoine Murray-Straughan) was touching and believable. Alex’s dream sequence performance after he has been shot with a dart was very funny and I loved the 30’s style sequence where Marty was singing about steak.
Antoine Murray-Straughan was just right as Marty, naïve, excitable and totally optimistic. His duet with Alex about friendship was beautiful and I loved his dancing.
Timmika Ramsay owned Gloria, sass a plenty, a hippo with all the right attitude, glorious. Jamie Lee-Morgan’s Melman was suitably neurotic and he moved unbelievably well with that long neck!
Jo Parsons was a wonderful King Julien, very funny as he connived and schemed. He led the lemurs and cast in an outstanding rendition of “I like to move it”.
This performance fairly zips along, the music and choreography is tight, harmonies are spot on, humour and pathos a plenty, I had a huge smile on my face from start to finish and left the theatre feeling good. A fabulous family night out – everyone left the Hull New Theatre with a big smile on their face.