Review: Madagascar The Musical at the Lyceum, Sheffield

Hard luck if you don’t, because that’s the only thing you’ll have ringing in your ears after seeing the madcap stage show Madagascar The Musical, unleashed on the Lyceum until Saturday.

It’s as fast-paced and funny as the original film, as family-friendly as the franchise, with singing steaks and some roar-some vocals thrown in.

The zany show is everything you and your little ones adore about the must-see movie, brought to life on stage.

The plot of the show sticks closely to that of the much-loved 2005 animated movie.

The antics begin in Central Park Zoo in New York, where we meet freedom-seeking Marty the Zebra, hypochondriac Melman the Giraffe, curvaceous Gloria the Hippo, and King of New York Alex, the Lion.

Actors in muscle-padded bodysuits play the parts of the animals (a talented supporting cast operate the puppets for the penguins and other creatures) and Joseph Hewlett is an almost inappropriately and distractingly attractive Alex.

His brilliantly strong singing steals the show, along with that of Olivier award-nominated Jarnéia Richard-Noel as Gloria.

Even when the script sometimes loses pace, and the first half occasionally feels disjointed, their singing never falters and is in a class of its own.

The star of the show, however, given top billing on all the posters, is CBBC anchor and 2019 Strictly finalist Karim Zeroual – though he doesn’t appear until after the interval in the second half.

But when he does, he does!

As the outlandish lemur King Julien of the Madagascan jungle, with all the best lines, he is laugh-out-loud hilarious, in a hysterically funny diminutive role that really can’t be easy on the knees.

It’s quite simply animal magic!

Even if you do have to suffer the song echoing in your subconscious for the next week at least.