The SpongeBob Musical – Queen Elizabeth Hall

Irfan Damani, Tom Read Wilson and Lewis Cornay in The SpongeBob Musical at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London and Touring. Picture: Mark Senior 

The SpongeBob Musical continues at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London until 27 August 2023. The production then tours until 9 September 2023.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Although an unlikely choice for a musical, based on the famous cartoon television series SpongeBob SquarePants created by Stephen Hillenberg, The SpongeBob Musical had a promising tryout in Chicago in 2016 before transferring to the Palace Theatre on Broadway in November 2017, tying with Mean Girls for the most Tony-nominated musical of the season and winning the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Outstanding Musical and Outstanding New Score. 

Its run, however, was cut short in 2018 – only 327 performances – due to the proposed renovations at the Palace Theatre (fortunately, the show was preserved as a television special with most of the original cast). A tour that started in December 2019 was also cut short because of the Covid lockdowns early the following year, and the first European production, beginning in Berlin in 2022, only toured for two months in Germany.  

So, I am very happy to announce that the first eagerly-awaited UK tour is well worth the wait, surpassing even the Broadway original in quality despite being a little more scaled down, though definitely no less inventive in its set designs by Steve Howell and costumes by Sarah Mercadé. The book by Kyle Jarrow manages to hold the audience’s attention for two and a half hours – much longer than the brief cartoon episodes – by adding the suspenseful threat of a volcano explosion to the plot and by embracing the opportunity to transform many of the original songs into showstopping numbers fabulously choreographed by Fabian Aloise. 

Aloise is a rising dance director who recently treated us to some equally spectacular moves in Cabaret at the Lido 2 in Paris, after already displaying his great talent in Bring It On at the Southbank Centre and Evita at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, landing an Olivier and WhatsOnStage award nominations for Best Choreography – after already having won the Off West End Award in 2018 for The Rink at the Southwark Playhouse. 

A descendant of the Bob Fosse tradition, having been Ann Reinking’s associate choreographer for the international tour of Fosse, Aloise is to be credited – along with director Tara Overfield Wilkinson – for giving us a more dance-infused SpongeBob than Broadway’s. 

Aloise and Wilkinson are strongly aided by a stellar cast, headed by the uber-talented Lewis Cornay in the title role. Cornay manages to combine his spectacular high-pitched vocals with the funny accent of the original cartoon character, and his dancing in the production is no less spectacular. 

Other cast standouts are Irfan Damani as Patrick Star, Sarah Freer as Pearl Krabs (also doubling as security during the hilarious prelude with the pirate) and Theo Reece as Larry the Lobster. Attracting a wider audience to the show are the big-name stars: Divina de Campo as Sheldon J Plankton and TV presenter Tom Read Wilson as Squidward Q Tentacles (alternating with Gareth Gates) who manages to pull off the best 11 o’clock showstopper ‘I’m Not a Loser’, featuring four-legged tap dancing, a number first immortalised on Broadway by the great Gavin Lee of Mary Poppins fame. 

The fact that the score is made up of a collection of songs by such famous popstars as David Bowie and Brian Eno (‘No Control’), Panic! at the Disco (‘Just a Simple Sponge’), Cyndi Lauper and Rob Hyman (‘Hero is My Middle Name’), Sara Bareilles (‘Poor Pirates‘), John Legend (‘I Guess I Miss You’) and Andy Paley with Tom Kenny (the optimistic finale ‘Best Day Ever’) may create an occasional sense of lack of unity, but this surely won’t prevent the already-winning production from achieving enormous success throughout its tour. It appeals to kids and grown-ups alike while refreshingly delivering authentic musical theatre instead of just coasting off a well-known brand. This is exactly what we need during a strike-ridden, rainy summer in London. 

Patrick Honoré