MADAGASCAR THE MUSICAL
Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay
Tue 6-Sun 11 Aug
Dreamworks’ box office sensation Madagascar is bound for the stage this August, bringing the animated escapees of Central Park Zoo to life in the Millennium Centre’s Donald Gordon Theatre. The 2005 motion picture made quite the splash on the big screen, prompting two sequels, a spin-off movie and now its very own smash-hit musical. X-Factor winner Matt Terry will take on the role of Alex the lion – the zoo’s most popular, and pampered, inhabitant who lives for the limelight – while restless zebra, Marty, who longs for a life beyond the zoo walls will be played by Antoine Murray-Straughan of West End production In The Heights.
Their comfortable lives at the zoo are interrupted suddenly when Marty decides to make his escape, and his friends Gloria (Timmika Ramsey’s sassy hippo) and Melman (Jamie Lee-Morgan’s hypochondriac giraffe) go after him with a rather reluctant Alex, who’d rather stay behind in the luxury enclosure. It’s safe to say that things don’t go quite to plan, as the stars of Central Park Zoo end up stranded in the Madagascar jungle where they must learn to fend for themselves. With the ‘help’ of some rather ambitious penguins, the gang tries to get back to the zoo but encounters a few bumps along the way, including a royal lemur who loves to move it move it and some hunger-induced hallucinations.
Using a mixture of actors, many of whom specialise in physical comedy, and puppetry to animate its rotating anthropomorphic collection of characters, Madagascar: The Musical is directed by Kirk Jameson, whose previous credits include a revival of the Peter Nichols play Privates On Parade, Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun and the German premiere of the hugely popular The Last Five Years.
Buckets of adventure, a brilliant cast and lively score make for a roaring, feelgood show which has already sparked rave reviews across the country and is set to continue its streak in Cardiff.
Tickets: £16-£34. Info: 029 2063 6464 / www.wmc.org.uk
words Amy Watts