Madagascar Jr. brought to stage by St. Mary’s School

By Mo Cranker on April 19, 2018.

mcranker@medicinehatnews.com @MHNmocranker

St. Mary’s School is getting ready to put on its annual play — and this year it’s going to the animals.

Madagascar Jr. will run at the Esplanade from April 24-27, and will showcase the talents of 45 St. Mary’s students.

“Anyone who has seen the ‘Madagascar’ movie will know what the play is about,” said producer Alexa Batsel. “There’s a group of friendly animals that want to bust out of the zoo and have some animal adventures. They run into some penguins along the way, some other animals and just have a lot of fun.”

St. Mary’s puts on one theatre show each year, with plenty of time going into each one.

“This has been in the works for a while,” said Batsel. “We start with rehearsals in November and December, then we start rehearsing twice a week.

“The students put a lot of time into each show, and it shows.”

While the play is based on a cartoon movie, Batsel says anyone can come out and enjoy the show.

“It’s really a show for anyone,” she said. “It’s obviously great for the little ones, but I do think adults will enjoy the dancing and music.

“Our final show, the Friday show, is a 10 a.m. showing. We do that so some of the younger kids can come out if they weren’t able to stay up for the 7 p.m. shows.”

Arianna Vercammen and Olivia Lewis play as Marty and Alex in the play, and they say it is exciting to put on a show.

“I like the scenes that are kind of scary, but really cool,” said Vercammen. “There’s a lot of funny parts in the play — I think a lot of people will enjoy it.”

Tickets for the show can be found online, http://www.buy.tixx.ca/eventperformances.asp?evt=851