Scooby-Doo and the Pirate Ghost, Playhouse

Published on Friday 3 July 2009 10:00

Scooby-Doo and the Pirate Ghost **** Playhouse

ZOINKS! Those meddling kids are at it again. Not content unmasking villains just trying to make a decent crust with insurance scams in deserted fairgrounds or the theft of priceless jewels from in-transit princes, the teenagers of Mystery Inc are even ruining the plans of evil geniuses while on holiday too.

Finding themselves on the way to a beautiful but cursed island to meet an old pen-pal, Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scooby landed in a whole lot of trouble with a crew of creepy phantoms at the Playhouse.

Booking into a haunted inn, with a Python-esque landlord , the gang soon discover that a pirate queen has risen from the grave to protect her hidden treasure. So far, so Hanna-Barbera, and in the same tried and trusted vein the story continues.

Holding the show together, Scooby and Shaggy are the deserving stars of the adventure with well choreographed and engaging performances. Matthew Bloxham's Shaggy enthusiastically leads the audience participation, really getting the children involved with the action, while Jamie Brown's cowardly Scooby is everything a mesmerised five-year-old could ask for.

In a departure from form, gang leader Fred seems to share many characteristics with Jim Carey's blundering pet detective Ace Ventura, short of some friendly animals, the only real difference between the two being Fred's helmet hair.

Strangely, Velma resembles a young Edwina Curry, circa the John Major years, which is when much of the script looks to have been written. There are many references not only to the artist who might again be called Prince but the Spice Girls too, all sailing high over the heads of anyone under ten. Production values, though, are stunningly high. There are wonderful sound-effects, scene changes and costumes. Yet the actual content of the play, exactly like those much-loved cartoons, is flimsy at best.

Disappointingly so, for the first show to arrive in town in time for the summer break, and its billing of 'fun for all the family' could well be described as generous at best.

With a plot so thin the paper it was written on could be transparent, jokes so rotten they probably sunk the original pirate ship and villains so cunningly disguised they might as well have forgone the costumes and treated the audience to an ice cream instead, there's really not much for parents to take away.

For all those pesky under-eights with nothing to do for the next seven weeks, however, there's a veritable Aladdin's cave of tacky merchandise to break by the end of the week, balloons to lose on the way home and characters to re-enact endlessly in the back garden with their friends and a handful of Scooby Snacks.

In the end, there was only one real mystery at the Playhouse last night – was that a real bat doing a circuit of the auditorium to the delight of the children or one of the on-stage vampires from the first scene going out for a bite?