Aladdin the Musical (West End) Review

Cast
Aladdin – Matthew Croke
Genie – Oliver Lidert
Jasmine – Jade Ewen
Jafar – Don Gallagher
Iago – Nick Cavaliere
Sultan – Cavin Cornwall
Kassim – Daniel De Bourg
Omar – Miles Barrow

Venue: Prince Edward Theatre

Date: Thursday 26th October 2017 (2:30pm)

Disney have been transforming popular films into live stage shows for many years now and Aladdin is certainly more than deserving a huge production on stage. It has some incredible songs and moments in the film and the stage show is spectacular, with a mix of those much-loved and well-known songs with some amazing new songs as well. It is a fantastic musical theatre experience from start to finish.

Aladdin is my favourite Disney film without a doubt, the first film that I went to see as a child at the cinema and I still love it to this day. Therefore I have such an emotional and sentimental connection to Aladdin, so getting the chance to see the musical live on stage was something I have wanted to do for a while now, 10,000 years according to the official twitter feed with a brilliant response to my pre-show tweet!

The story follows street rat Aladdin who is always in trouble due to stealing, mainly food so he can survive. Along with his close friends they must attempt to live on the streets, everything is going to change though when he is the diamond in the rough, who Jafar must use to send on a special mission. That’s right to get the lamp, although Aladdin has no idea it is a magic lamp. With a Genie inside! His life is then about to change as he wants to change himself for Princess Jasmine, only one problem with that though she must marry a Prince to keep the Kingdom for her father the Sultan. Princess Jasmine has her own problems as she is refusing to marry any of the suitors her father is putting before her. A very strong-willed woman and quite frankly and inspirational female character in my opinion.

It must be extremely difficult to put together a musical on this scale when everyone knows everything about the story. We do have some differences though and that is the omission of the animals, but don’t worry though we are given some very clever references hidden throughout the show which is such a great touch. The Genie really is such a key and amazing character, adding so much humour to the show in such an incredible way.

The colourful costumes, set and incredible dance routines are all just spectacular, really giving the story an incredible format on stage. I actually found myself very impressed with the tiger for the cave and loved that part so much, it was a lot bigger than I had expected. Obviously though the part everyone was waiting for had to be the magic carpet ride, ‘A Whole New World’ and do you know what it was even more magical than you can imagine. I am putting it as one of those theatre moments that you really must experience, it looked incredible.

Matthew Croke was a brilliant Aladdin and I may have possibly fallen a little bit in love with him, that’s normal right? He was engaging with both acting and singing, you could not take your eyes off him when on stage. Oliver Lidert was a scene stealer as the Genie and had the larger than life persona nailed on. Don Gallagher had fantastic presence as the very evil Jafar, with plenty of planning and scheming. Jade Ewen was very good as Jasmine and has some great chemistry with Croke.

I felt my favourite song from the new additions had to be ‘Proud of Your Boy’ it is just a lovely musical theatre song. With inspirational and well lovely lyrics, showing that Aladdin was about to make some changes in his life for the better. The dance routines to go along with all of the songs was just brilliant, I could easily head back and see this show again and again.

Aladdin the Musical is currently booking until April 2018, for more information check out the website – here.