Bridlington Spa Theatre – until 22 September 2018
Reviewed by Marcus Richardson
3***
Madagascar is a film I think everyone enjoys, talking animals – who could ask for more? Now the film has made it to the stage as a musical, and to Bridlington.
The musical features high energy music and lots of laughs both for the children and the adults. I feel I don’t really need to go into the plot that much as everyone knows what happening, but if you’ve been living under a rock, a bunch of New York zoo animals escape and end up in Madagascar.
The cast did a great job of keeping up the high energy and putting modern references in with the use of dabbing and flossing, the show and cast does a good job at aiming towards a target audience. Matt Terry, who won X Factor in 2016, took on the role of Alex the Lion, his performance was quite entertaining bringing the vocals that won him the show, however Timmika Ramsay, who play Gloria the Hippo, stole the show with her vocals giving her a powerful and soulful vibe. Antoine Murray-Straughan played Marty the Zebra and Jamie Lee-Morgan played Melman the Giraffe, both did a good job at working alongside the cast and giving the characters comedy and life. One of the things Madagascar is most famous for is the song “Move It” and the Lemur King, Julien, played by Jo Parsons, brought laughs from his entrance onstage and giving the show a somewhat pantomime feel. The four penguins were came to life from a team of puppeteers who also in turn became lemurs for the second act, they did a great job of bringing the puppets to life and making scenes rather funny.
The stage has simple but effective props to show scene changing and the cast also were used in moving set around in a way that made sense to the play and worked really well. The costumes are rather bizarre at first with the four main animals being in padded body suits with fake bum and muscles, however the costume that made a lot of people laugh was that of King Julien who was on his knees to give the character short stature. The costumes were good however and suited the animation from the film.
The show had an overall happy theme with the story of friendship and adventure, the cast did a good job bring this to stage. The music was good, however none of the song were iconic and didn’t stick into my mind. This show is definitely one you would want to bring kids and can be enjoyed by the whole family.