Book and Lyrics: Shayla El-Bushra
Music: Ahmed Abdullahi Gallab
Director: Emily Lim
The Leeds Playhouse Christmas offering for children this year takes on a tale by one of the greatest storytellers of the century, Roald Dahl. Not a particularly long book, nor one with the narrative of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, nor the comedy of The Twits.The Enormous Crocodile is a fairly short tale of, you guessed it, an enormous crocodile. This sly and dastardly Croc is so big and so hungry that he decides he really must have something for his lunch that will actually fill him up – a child! But where will he find a child in the jungle?
This zany story has been turned into a joyous and funny musical directed by Emily Lim, that has both children and adults tee-heeing and guffawing throughout. A beautiful combination of song, movement and silliness, it is a delight to watch and and listen to.
The music by Ahmed Abdullahi Gallab uses reccurring themes and reprises throughout the 55 minute show to give the musical a sense of development and progress, interspersed with individual songs for each of the characters that we meet along the way. The result of this is that each song is different, but it all fits cohesively together within the storyline and the jungle theme. Some songs are beautiful (If Only I Were Brave) and others brilliantly kooky, including a song with audience participation about the huge reptile being ‘Sizzled like a sausage’.
The introduction of the Enormous Crocodile himself does not disappoint, his body is concocted of several different moving parts, always with the gigantic head at the front, but with a variety of different sizes and shapes of object to represent the body and tail. This is incredibly effective and means that Elliotte Williamns-N’Dure can expertly weave her way through the set and props while belting out her songs. Williams-N’Dure has a beautifully rich tone and is a perfect croc, pompous, arrogant and very pleased with himself at his own ‘secret plans and clever tricks’.
A strong and effective ensemble performance, the production has a small cast playing all of the roles, both animal and human. Each cast member works incredibly hard, providing appropriate actions, accents and affectations for each of the characters they are working with along with bringing them to life with excellent puppetry skills. Toby Olié’s skills as co-director and puppetry designer have not gone to waste in this production – the audience are treated to the Roly Poly bird (Philippa Hogg), Trunky the elephant (Charis Alexandra), a cheeky monkey called Muggle Wump (Robyn Sinclair), Humpy Rumpy the hippo with a nervous gas problem and an instant hit with the 4-8 year olds in the audience (Lawrence Hodgson-Mullings) and a pair of bendy legged tree frogs. Each costume is cleverly designed to have quirks and features of the animal being portrayed while ensuring the puppeteers are visible and can be heard.
Stand out moments include the introduction of the Jungle Juniors, three disobedient children who are desperate to explore the jungle and to do whatever they are told not to do. The children are represented through half adult size headless puppets, with the real head of each actor poking through at the top. The result is somewhere between cute and hilarious and had the audience in fits of giggles at both their personalities and their antics.
The 11 year old and 8 year old your reviewer was sitting next to loved every second of the musical, and they were not the only ones – the interactivity with the audience draws them all in from the first minutes of the pre-show to the lobbing of monkey nuts at the Enormous Crocodile in the finale. This is a joyful way to spend 55 minutes.
The show is transferring from the Leeds Playhouse to Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in the summer of 2024. For children aged 4 to 11 (and parents too!) this is definitely quality children’s musical theatre at its best.
Runs until 6th January 2024.
The Reviews Hub Score
Croctastic!
