Madagascar - A Musical Adventure

Madagascar - A Musical Adventure at Coterie Theatre

Missing a best friend matters more than missing dinner, even for a lion as attached to his comforts as Alex. Alex doesn't understand why anyone would leave a life of adoring crowds and predictable steak dinners, but when your best friend bolts from the Central Park Zoo, you follow. So do Melman the anxious giraffe and Gloria the hippo, and suddenly four pampered animals are way out of their depth.

The Coterie delivers this roughly one-hour stage adaptation that moves quickly enough to hold younger attention spans while giving the story room to breathe. Families will recognize Alex's swagger, Marty's restlessness, and the bickering affection that makes these four worth rooting for. The songs—including Wild and Free and Best Friends—lean into the characters' clashing desires: Alex wants safety and status, Marty wants horizons he's never seen, and nobody's quite prepared for Madagascar, where King Julien has his own agenda and a pack of penguins are plotting their own Antarctic getaway.

What makes this musical work is the same tension that drove the DreamWorks film: can friendship survive when you want completely different things? The Coterie brings that question to Kansas City stages with a show built for all ages, short enough to skip the squirming but long enough to matter.

Grab tickets for Madagascar - A Musical Adventure at the Coterie Theatre.