The Lion King at the Bristol Hippodrome is a truly an ‘out of Africa’ experience.

Your senses are hit with a riot of colour and sound from the start of this award-winning musical which should be top of everyone’s must-see theatre bucket list.

The costumes and performances are breathtaking.

And using puppetry, lights, shadows, and silhouettes the scenery is stunning.

This is the third time I have seen The Lion King and it seems to have become more family friendly but that would have been my familiarity with knowing what comes next.

The ‘three witches’ of Shakespeare become the scary hyenas Shenzi (Candida Mosoma), Banzai (Reece McKenzie), and Ed (Alex Bloomer), the uptight red-biller hornbill Zazu (Matthew Forbes) is a regimental sergeant major, and a meerkat called Timon (Alan McHale) with his best buddy Pumbaa (Carl Sanderson), a gluttonous warthog are a great comedic double act from pantomime.

The masks, the stilts, the red pointe ballet shoes, contraptions that look like garden art, the height of the rockface at the edge of the savannah, the elephant’s graveyard, phew.

And the movements to depict characters – the eyes and ears didn’t know what to absorb next, an overwhelming kaleidoscope of treats.

The theme song Hakuna Matata meaning ‘no worries’ from the 1994 Disney movie The Lion King resonates with your soul much like the South African national anthem Nkosi Sikelel.

The score contains songs from the film written by Elton John and Tim Rice, and a score composed by Hans Zimmer, with African chants by Lebo M, we even get a baboon singing in Khoisan, a clicking language.

Add to the music mix a fabulous live orchestra with conductor Matt Abrams and up in the boxes from fantastic drummers.

It is so good to see an almost all-black cast, such as in the Marvel film