Last night we were lucky enough to be invited to come and watch ‘Madagascer Live‘ at Wembley! The touring show is here in London for 3 nights only so what a treat for us!
We are, as you may know if you’re a frequent visitor to my blog, massive fans of theatre! Theatre of any kind! But it never gets more exciting than seeing something live in a massive arena like Wembley!
Often when we see something on such a massive scale the singing and voice work is pre-recorded. We’ve seen lots of things where this has been the case and although we have always had a wonderful time when viewing such a performance, it has crossed my mind that it could be just a smidge more exciting if the singing was live as well as the dancing. I understand that often costumes and rigorous dance routines prevent it from being possible and just assumed, as I had seen pictures of the amazing ‘Madagascar Live’ costumes, that this show would be the same. I was SO wrong!
We are big ‘Madagascar’ fans in our house. When the first film came out and before Jonny and I had children even, I remember going to the cinema to see it and these days we have that same film on repeat on DVD as our daughter absolutely loves it too! Last night, travelling to Wembley, she was super excited (as was I) and we sang ‘I Like to Move It, Move It’ all the way there! We tapped our feet and were literally balls of excitement!
Tapping our ‘Move it, move it’ feet on the way there!
Just walking into an arena when something is about to start gives you a buzz and the buzz was all around us, in the air and from all the noise of children shouting, laughing and enjoying the wait for the show to begin! We took our seats and bouncing up and down we anticipated the show. We went wanting it to be great and expecting it to be awesome. Sometimes it’s better to try to not hype things too much because it can often lead to disappointment but with ‘Madagascar’ being such a firm favourite we couldn’t help it so I just crossed my fingers and hoped we wouldn’t feel let down having built it up too much! My 12-year-old sister was with us also so I had two children hoping for it to be wonderful, that’s a lot of expectation I can tell you!
Trying on our ‘Madagascar Live’ glasses, the exciting time waiting for the show to start!
At the beginning of the show, to much exciting music and to introduce us to the cast (not that Melman, Alex, Gloria or Marty need much introduction so popular are they), two zoo keeper compares made the initial performance and built us up ready for the fun! Then, before we knew it, the all singing, all dancing animal friends we know so well, were on stage, singing and dancing! LIVE! I breathed a sigh of relief for within the first few minutes I knew it was even better than we had wanted it to be… That’s really quite something! I looked at the girls and two massive grins beamed back at me. Couldn’t want much more than that could you! So, I too, sat back to enjoy the show!
Two happy faces enjoying the show and dancing to the music!
What struck me most was how awesome the cast’s voices sounded. Obviously they are all well-trained actors, dancers and singers but to sing to the level of Nicole Turner (Gloria) and have a whole stadium with their mouths open in reaction is really quite a feat! That woman has LUNGS! And some! Anther thing was how amazing the costumes are. I mean, these are just people in costumes. They shouldn’t really look exactly like the animations but somehow they do and they sound like them too! They sound exactly the same which to a three-year-old is actually quite important. What a little one wants from seeing a show like this is a bit of continuity, an extension on the excitement and joy they get from the film but it has to look and sound right or they’d just be disappointed. It couldn’t fit the bill more and the story, although slightly different in places, follows the idea of the first film so is very easy for tiny tots to get on board with. (The evening show starts at 6.30pm which is another plus for taking younger ones – they’ve been really generous in their thinking about what families want and from that to the fact the show is just under two hours long WITH an interval, it’s perfect for a family adventure of a treat night out)!
The set, which is changed from New York Zoo, to Subway (loved the train), to boat to Africa, to Madagascar beach and beyond is wonderfully inventive and with perfect interludes of comedy and mayhem from a roving reporter streaming live info on the whereabouts of the ‘animals on the run’, the cheeky monkey puppets (so cleverly operated) and of course the ever favourite penguins, it goes entirely without hiccup! It’s been designed incredibly well and the boxes that the animals travel in are wonderful!
Jennifer Rapp who choreographed the whole production as well as assisting the Direction with Gip Hoppe has also used some incredible skills. Melman in particular has some fabulous moves! Moves… Move It! That’s the bit my little one was most looking forward to and the dance and song with King Julien certainly didn’t disappoint either! We were ‘moving it, moving it’ all the way home!
Simply LOVED Madagascar Live!
For more information and to buy tickets for the tour please see the website www.madlive.co.uk. I have not been paid to write this post but I was given tickets to see the show in order to review it.
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