The Enormous Crocodile – The Lowry, Salford

Music: Ahmed Abdullahi Gallab
Lyrics: Suhayla El-Bushra
Writer: Road Dahl
Adaptor: Roald Dahl Story Company
Director: Emily Lin

Despite the ‘Secret plans and clever tricks’ of the Enormous Crocodile, myself and my two mini reviewers were brave enough to encounter and survive them all at The Lowry this weekend!

The MUCH loved children’s writer and illustrator duo Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake are renowned for their witty and dark humour, peculiar characters, and underlining morals of how good can always out wit evil; and their story of The Enormous Crocodile is definitely not an acceptation to this with his protagonist being the enormous crocodile himself who plots to kill and eat children. And although the adaptation by Roald Dahl story company, Emily Lin, Ahmed Abdullahi Gallab, Suhayla El-Bushra and Tom Brady lacks the dark humour and wit, it captures the morals and fun perfectly for it’s targeted young audience.

The scene is set wonderfully from the preshow with the jungle set design by Fly Davies, bubbles pumping out throughout the auditorium and walk about jungle characters stirring up the little ones excitement. The use of  the auditorium as an extended jungle and stage continues through out the production which helps keeps little ones engaged and in the story – a particular highlight being allowed to through rubber monkey nuts towards to toothy scally villain!

The team of 5 work tirelessly to re tell the story, constantly changing from character to to character, and puppet to puppet. A real highlight of the production are the very inventive puppets, designed by Toby Olie; they are large and loud and very true to Blake’s illustrations. The puppets are also very functional with large almost mechanical mouths to help animate them, which was a shame they were only used for ‘snapping,’ or the occasional gasp and not throughout the animals dialogue and songs as this could have helped further bring the characters to life.

The chose to have the conductor on the stage is one which I would usually praise, but in this case the right side of the audience did loose moments of the show, with characters set a little too far back and behind the large sound desk  at times. With the exception of the enormous crocodile and the even more enormous elephant!

Although a few fun moments are missed from the original book such as the fun fair scene where we see the croc up his game with this clever tricks, the adaptation and creation of the scouting children on a jungle safari worked very well and again a highlight being the use of puppetry here to turn the 3 adult actors into 3 naughty children! Perhaps a warning here to the children in the audience to always listen to their grown ups rules?! Especially number 3 about not running off!

Through clever puppetry, strong performers and catchy songs by Ahmed Abdullahi Gallab and Suhayla El-Bushra  (most notably about being Brave!), The Enormous Crocodile is an uplifting and fun show to take your little ones too, and has inspired us to be brave even when we think the problem is too enormous!

With this fantastic show currently playing at the Lowry it really is a fantastic time to catch the production with The Lowry galleries current Quentin Blake exhibition which includes original sketches of Mr Croc himself!

The Enormous Crocodile runs at The Lowry until January 2026