Madgscar the musical, was it worth it ?

My review of Madagascar the musical.

Recently , I went to see Madagascar the musical at the Southampton Mayflower theatre.

Being somebody who hasn’t actually watched the Madagascar films I thought that I might struggle to understand the plot and to be honest I did . In the first half it was pretty tricky to work out what was going on and was actually quite chaotic . The first half was pretty unpleasing and I expected more . For me and the others accompanying me we felt that it just didn’t make sense and was actually quite boring to the point where my mum nearly feel asleep . Now maybe this could be because It was aimed at a younger audience but it was also aimed at families so should be suitable for all !

 There was a small interval and then it started up again. I wasn’t expecting much from the second half but it definitely proved from the first half and maybe that’s because it got better with time . I now understood the story plot a bit better and it seemed to be more exciting and upbeat in the second half. Most of the action was in the second half of the performance.

I was impressed with the costumes though ! They were very well done and you could definitely tell what animals they where ! Some of the animals where puppets for example the penguins and personally I felt that the puppeteers really stuck out. They wore completely different coloured clothes so it looked very obviously that they weren’t a penguin . It would have been better if the puppeteers wore the same outfit or same colour clothing as the penguins they where acting out as ! This was a similar issue with Melman’s the giraffe costume ! This costume was warn by an actor but then they also controlled his neck and head. Instead of the actors head being camouflaged it stuck out like a sore thumb! The actors head was in the body of the giraffe and it was so obvious and very strange they didn’t even try to put paint on the actor so it looked quite strange. I found myself forgetting that he was a giraffe because the actors mouth was moving !  Although The puppets themselves were very well made and very realistic and really matched the looks from the original movies!

The set design was pretty realistic with props and also lots of different backdrops. They had some big set pieces that followed the show around if that make sense but I think it was pretty good and worked well !

The sound was a major issue ! It was completely off and you often couldn’t here the actors speak! The mics where often cutting out which I know often cant be helped but you expect more from a professional theatre and a major touring show!

The sound really effected the songs as you couldn’t really hear any of the words sung as the music was too loud and the mics were very quiet!

I am visually impaired and unfortunately there wasn’t any audio description available on any of performances which is really disappointing. So I was relying heavily on the audio but I found that I couldn’t really rely on it as it was all over the place!

The lighting was nothing special but worked well in places when it was needed to amplify the situation and scene.

The actors did a great job especially when the sounds kept going their voices where very loud and could just about be heard without the microphones ! The actors did really well acting like animals and where quite convincing apart from the costume errors ! The actors all had reasonably good singing voices ! I have got to give as shout out to Karim Zeroual who played king Julian because his costume meant that he had to crawl on his knees on the stage floor ! Because of that it did make for a bit of a comedic side because he was shuffling along the floor and it did look quite funny ! 

Over all I feel like its not necessarily worth going out of your way to see the musical and I wouldn’t say it felt like a professional musical the tickets where pretty pricey and I definitely wouldn’t pay it again ! I think it might be a bit different if you had younger children but for me as a 17 year old it just wasn’t good enough ! 

Thanks for reading my review 😊