The SpongeBob Musical - Opera House, Manchester - Tues 16th May

Who lives in a pineapple under the sea…? SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS! 

This smash hit Nickelodeon musical based on the even bigger smash hit TV show is now on tour across the UK bringing the classic characters to life on stage. 

After a 20 minute technical delay, the show got underway and I wanted the answer to the question “Is this musical a gimmicky kind of show or is it a star(fish) in it’s own right?!”

Story & Cast

Bikini Bottom is under threat from a HUGE volcanic eruption (cleverly made of plastic bottles!) and its up to SpongeBob, Patrick and Sandy the squirrel to save the day by stopping the eruption before it’s too late!!

That’s the basic plot of the story but as you can imagine, throughout the show the sub plots are; Plankton and Karen the Computer plotting an evil scheme, Mr Krabs loving his money and Pearl the Whale being a right sassy little diva.

With the story being a crisis story, they have a curfew/lockdown scenario which leads to jokes about the Covid pandemic and the Government’s handling of said crisis. (Good on you, Nickelodeon!!)

The story isn’t too complex, which I didn’t think it would be with this being a family show but it’s definitely enough to fill the whole show without any dead or flat moments. This something that should be applauded as some other family shows (looking at you, Disney) tend to have pointless moments which are clearly there as filler. 

Moving on to the cast, I was apprehensive to see how the performers delivered such recognisable and iconic characters such as SpongeBob, Patrick and Sandy but also to see how they’d handle other characters such as Mrs. Puff and Old Man Jenkins. I’m glad to say they all smashed it!

SpongeBob (Lewis Cornay) was the right level of annoyingly positive and ‘peppy’ with the iconic Spongebob voice, but cracked out some impressive notes and songs throughout the show which was a welcome surprise! Definitely a great choice of casting and Lewis led the cast perfectly.

Patrick was played by Irfan Damani and let me say, if you find Patrick funny in the TV show, you’ll find him hilarious in this musical. Comedic timing is really important to land the laughs and Irfan was able to do this with ease. The chemistry between SpongeBob and Patrick was great and their ballad-style song in act 2 was actually beautiful (I can’t believe I’m saying that about SpongeBob and Patrick!) It had my 10 year old sister shedding a little tear.

Sandy the Squirrel (Chrissie Bhima) was the ‘straight’ character to the other goofy ones and she helped the story progress with her scientific facts and logic. Chrissie played the Texan Rodent very well and kept up with the energy of SpongeBob and Patrick, which is not an easy thing to do! I wasn’t massively impressed with Sandy’s singing but still a very enjoyable character.

The celebrity casting in this show is for the characters Squidward and Plankton. In Manchester, Squidward is played by Tom Read-Wilson (Celeb’s Go Dating) and Plankton by Divina De Campo (RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, Hedwig & The Angry Inch).

Divina delivered a very cunning and evil performance as Plankton. It was great to see the character not be drag-based or overly camp and to see Divina do musical theatre as I heard amazing things about Hedwig & The Angry Inch.

Tom Read-Wilson… not going to lie, I was worried this was gimmick casting. Boy was I proved wrong! He was amazingly pessimistic as Squidward throughout the show which gave some great comedy moments. Squidwards song ends up with him wearing a sparkly jacket following his mothers dream for him to perform on a stage.

I want to give a shoutout to Hannah Lowther as Karen the Computer among many other characters. The amount of quick changes this woman has, I don’t know how she knows whether she’s coming or going. Also, she’s got some real pipes on her! I really wish I could have seen her in Heathers as one of the three Heathers.

The remaining cast members were:

Richard J Hunt - Mr Krabs

Sarah Freer - Pearl

Eloise Davies - Mrs Puff

Rebecca Lisewski - Mayor

Sam Beveridge

Jeremiah Olaleye

Eleanor Turiansky

Rhys Batten

Reece Kerridge

Who all gave amazing performances as the supporting characters of the SpongeBob TV show. There’s a real team effort from the whole cast in this show.

Music

I was very surprised at how good the songs were in this show! I honestly thought they were going to be forgetful songs that focus more on the action on stage and the comedy rather than the actual score and lyrics.

The songs were written by music stars such as Sara Bareilles, John Legend and Panic! At the Disco so I should have known they were going to be great quality, in all fairness.

I’ve been singing the opening song ALL day and it will not leave my head… that’s the sign of a good song!

My favourite song was the ballad that SpongeBob and Patrick sing in Act 2 which I mentioned above. I was astonished at how moving it actually was!!

Set, Sound and Tech

So, I mentioned at the beginning of this review that the show started 20 minutes late due to technical difficulties. I really don’t think those difficulties were solved before the show started and as this was press night I feel like they wanted to just crack on and get going. 

The microphone quality was AWFUL! They kept coming on halfway through a character’s lines so we couldn’t hear, they kept feeding back, they kept just going off. The sound quality was also rubbish. We weren’t able to hear a lot of the lead singing over the backing vocals and the band which means we missed a lot of the lyrics.

When speaking to Front of House staff at the end, they mentioned they’d had this feedback a lot and they had passed it on to the production team. I hope this gets sorted as it really lets down a fantastic production.

The set was lacking, to be blunt. The lead character’s houses were flat boards on a triangular shaped wheeled platforms, the volcano was two sets of stairs and that was pretty much it. I’d expected a better quality set for such a big production company as Nickelodeon. 

Overall

Overall, this show is fantastic and you should definitely go and see it if you loved the TV show and want a fun show for all the family! I just hope the tech issues get sorted ASAP as it really let it down.

Story ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Cast ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Music ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Set ⭐️⭐️

Sound ⭐️

Overall ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️