I’M always grateful to the reminder that comes before the start of a show to turn my mobile phone off. I’d hate to be ‘that’ person who is frantically rooting in their bag to switch off the embarrassing ringtone after it inevitably rings at a really inappropriate moment.
But no-one in the audience of Shrek the Musical at the Liverpool Empire was taking that chance.
We were warned that if we didn’t switch off our mobiles, ‘a big green ogre would leap out into the audience, find you and fart on you’, a message met with hilarity, including my young son who, after initially laughing, innocently asked me if this was really true.
Shrek the Musical tells the story of the enormous ogre Shrek and the feisty Princess Fiona, whom he rescues from a dragon guarded tower and inevitably falls in love with but not before having a series of comical adventures along the way.
Dean Chisnall played a very convincing Shrek, to the point where Wayne Rooney should be worried. And thanks to some awesome puppetry, the dragon was absolutely spectacular - these scenes were some of the most captivating.
There were brilliant laugh-out-loud moments throughout, many of these coming from the vertically-challenged evil baddie Lord Farquaad, brilliantly portrayed by Gerard Carey.
A special mention should also go to Idriss Kargbo who played the loveable donkey and some of the show’s panto-style lines were a clear winner with the younger members of the audience resulting in the cast receiving a well-deserved standing ovation at the end.
There weren’t any particularly memorable tunes – perhaps with the exception of ‘Story of My Life’ -but the colour, energy, vibrancy and humour more than made up for this and it scored top marks on the feel-good factor.
I asked my five-year-old what his favourite part of the show was. “The bit where he trumped and burped mummy!” was his response. And getting his very own Shrek ears to wear, of course.
A very happy ending to a ‘shrektacular’ show.
Shrek runs at the Liverpool Empire until December 6.
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