This evening we spent a rather enjoyable couple of hours at The Opera House, Winter Gardens, Blackpool. This is the first time we have been able to get over to Blackpool for a theatre review and we were not disappointed.
Main characters Alex, Melman, Gloria and Marty were certainly dressed to impress with attention to detail on their costumes being spot on. The accents were convincing too – particularly Marty, played by Antoine Murray-Straughan.
Madagascar the Musical has been promoted as starring Matt Terry of X-factor fame but the show we saw starred Brandon Gale as Alex the Lion instead, who gave an excellent performance.
We took a risk with this show and decided to take all three children. The older two have been theatre-goers since they were around five years old and will sit still to watch a performance, but our youngest son is only just two. With this in mind we agreed that we would start to watch the show together but when Squidge got fed up my husband would take him out of the theatre so as not to disturb the audience (or the cast!). At a recent visit to see Peppa Pig on stage, my usually placid toddler had a full on tantrum during the interval, hence our exit strategy this time.
What actually happened was that our music loving two year old sat beautifully throughout the first half of the show, dancing in his seat and sitting fully engrossed in the show like I’ve never seen him do before. The interval gave him chance to stretch his legs and the second half caught his attention once more. There are so many songs in the show that there isn’t too long between them, keeping little ones entertained throughout.
The children really enjoyed themselves and particularly liked the penguins. The whole theatre got giddy though when we all began to ‘Move it, move it!’ Have you ever seen a lemur floss?
Madagascar the Musical was a wonderful feel good show and we all had a thoroughly enjoyable evening.
The show is on at The Opera House in Blackpool until 15th September 2018 before it moves on to Bridlington Spa. For more tour dates see the Madagascar the Musical website.