Scouts! The Musical was reviewed at the Crescent Theatre, Birmingham. The production continues to tour until 29 June).
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
Proving that no subject is safe and you really can make a musical about anything, Gigglemug Theatre is sending its show Scouts! The Musical on a mini UK tour. Following tryouts at London’s The Other Palace in 2023 (where it received a WhatsOnStage Award nomination for Best Off-West End Production), the musical is now hitting the road in June, pitching its tent first in Birmingham before moving on to Manchester, London and Bath later this month.
Celebrating the Scouts movement, Gigglemug’s show takes us to the annual Scout Games, where the competition is about to kick off. Led by Scout Leader Dylan (played by Kemi Clarke), the eager young scouts are keen to show off their skills, including youngsters Eliza (Eleanor Fransch) and Joe (Burhan Kathawala), who look set to form a new friendship in the middle of the events. When a mysterious new participant arrives harbouring a dark secret and intentions of revenge, Eliza and Joe must try and find a way to save the day, although it threatens to destroy their friendship before it has a chance to begin.
Gigglemug Theatre has a proven track record of choosing unlikely subjects for their musicals (see A Jaffa Cake Musical and Timpson: The Musical), so their exploration of the Scouts movement as their next project shouldn’t really come as much of a surprise, although it’s probably not a subject many audiences are crying out for a stage musical about.
Squarely aimed at children, Scouts! The Musical is unashamedly silly and daft, with characters firmly in the “wholesome” or “shady” bracket, and everything rolls along pleasantly enough. There’s not a lot of meat on the bones of Sam Cochrane’s book and it struggles to fill its running time (which is only one hour and 45 minutes including interval). Tonally it’s a little uneven, with Cochrane’s direction occasionally stepping into pantomime territory but never fully giving into it, and including moments of more surreal humour which don’t really land and leave the audience somewhat confused and subdued.
There is also some audience participation at the start which achieves limited success and again sets the show off on an uneven footing. The show feels an uneasy mix of parody, pantomime and heartfelt friendship drama, seemingly undecided on what it actually wants to be, and doesn’t blend the disparate parts into a cohesive whole.
The show features an original score by David Fallon and Cochrane, and again it’s a bit of a mixed bag, mostly middle of the road with a few random choices and a handful of high points (‘Home’, ‘Skills For Life’ and the standout ‘Braver’). There is a lack of signature melodies to make the songs more memorable, and as a result there’s little that stays with you on the way home.
Though the score and script may need to earn a few more badges, the cast members really do give their all and work incredibly hard in their roles, elevating the material and entertaining throughout. With a big belting voice, Fransch gives a fantastic performance as Eliza and deserves to be a future star. Matching her in the vocals is Emily Kitchingham as Charlotte, who again nearly blows the roof off the Crescent Theatre with some huge notes.
Katie Pritchard shows a brilliant knack for comedy as a Melissa McCarthy-esque Rosie, and Clarke demonstrates the energy levels of a children’s TV presenter sponsored by Duracell. The whole cast also impresses by playing a multitude of instruments while singing and acting, and really do work their Scout-regulation socks off.
We love to champion new musicals and it’s always great to see a new one hit our stages, a product of the significant amount of time, work, effort and money that have gone into their creation. Scouts! The Musical needs a bit more time and work but there is definite potential here, and with a cast that really does excel in getting the best out of the material, it’s still worth a watch, and we’re excited to see where it could go in the future.
Rob Bartley
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