Picture: Mark Senior
The SpongeBob Musical was reviewed at the Birmingham Hippodrome (playing until 15 April 2023). The tour continues until 9 September 2023.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
The SpongeBob SquarePants phenomenon has been entertaining TV viewers for nearly 25 years, so eventually a stage adaptation was inevitable. Far whackier than the more traditional Disney adaptations of their animated stories, The Spongebob Musical first hit theatres in 2016 in a burst of colour and zany humour, and saw the inhabitants of Bikini Bottom swapping their underwater world for Broadway, and bringing the vibrant look of the TV show, along with its trademark irreverent wit and sharp characterisation. Now it’s our turn, as a new production has recently launched a national tour.
SpongeBob Squarepants (played here by Lewis Cornay) is a happy-go-lucky sea-sponge working as a fry cook in a local diner, and lives in a pineapple under the sea alongside his friends Patrick Star (Irfan Damani), Sandy Cheeks (Chrissie Bhima) and Squidward Q Tentacles (Gareth Gates).
On one average ‘Bikini Bottom Day’, an unexpected tremor suddenly warns of an imminent volcanic eruption that threatens to destroy the town, sending the population into panic. At the same time, rival diner owner Sheldon J Plankton (Divina De Campo) launches his own evil scheme, appearing to offer a salvation to the crisis that will also hypnotise everyone into favouring his own failing restaurant. Cheered on by his friends, Spongebob tries to find a way of saving the town, hoping to prove himself to be more than everyone else thinks he can be.
Fans of the SpongeBob franchise will find a lot to enjoy here, with numerous nods and references to long-running jokes within the series, and the characters being brought to life in a really effective way. Less successful is the accessibility of the stage production for newbies, and also a question hangs over the show as to whether it works as a piece of musical theatre.
While it’s certainly great to look at (thanks to Steve Howell’s set design and Sarah Mercade’s costumes), confidently directed (Tara Overfield Wilkinson) and performed well (with excellent choreography by Fabian Aloise), the show falls into an awkward grey area of being too mature for very young audiences, and not deep enough for adults, and so ends up being oddly dissatisfying. The show has great characters but is very light on story, and struggles to fully sustain its running time, resorting to filling the time with more songs rather than creating a richer narrative.
SpongeBob’s music and lyrics come from an assortment of pop artists including David Bowie, Panic! At The Disco, Cyndi Lauper, Sara Bareilles, Lady A and John Legend. While such a diverse creative team brings a wealth of different ideas, the resulting original songs feel more of a patchwork “brainstorming board of ideas” than a cohesive musical, and there are more fillers than there are standouts.
There is also an over-reliance on simplistic rhyming and repetition in many of the songs, perhaps to make them more accessible for children, but it does make the score feel very slight as the backbone of a musical. ‘(Just A) Simple Sponge’ is perhaps the only moment where the show steps up from safe pantomime fun into a moment of true musical theatre, helped by some clever staging and choreography and a powerhouse vocal performance from Cornay.
Although the material may be lacking, the cast does sell it well. Cornay is brilliant as the heroic sponge, full of energy and playfulness and really embodying a cartoon character come to life. He never lets his sense of character drop for a second, shows excellent timing and delivers on the vocals.
Gates also does well as the exasperated Squidward, continually sidelined from performing his solo until his big ‘I’m Not a Loser’ number in Act II which he performs confidently despite not really being a natural dancer. Damani is hugely likeable as the adorably simple Patrick, and De Campo is also a lot of fun as Plankton, arguably sticking to her very familiar “pantomime villain” style, but it suits the show and she delivers it well.
The Spongebob Musical brings its beloved characters to the stage in a bright and colourful way, but it’s more of a great-natured pantomime experience than the musical it’s trying to be. The show needs a stronger plot and score to become anything more than forgettable fluff, but some fantastic characterisation from a likeable cast will guarantee enough of a good time to satisfy fans of the TV sponge. It’s just not as “absorbing” for the rest of us as a piece of musical theatre should be.
Rob Bartley
- The role of Squidward is shared between Gareth Gates and Tom Read Wilson, check individual venue listings for details
Comments are closed.