The Creakers musical at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall – review

Children’s theatre is tremendously tricky to get right. Go too earnest and you’ll lose your young audience, go too dark and you run the risk of terrifying them, go on too long and they’ll be needing the toilet and a drink. This musical adaptation of Tom Fletcher’s environmentally aware book for the preteens is successful on a number of fronts, but it’s particularly gratifying to report that the audience of kids on the day I attended seemed genuinely entranced by this chaotic combination of mayhem, mystery, puppetry and musical treats (Fletcher is also responsible for the songs).

The Creakers never talks down to its audience, and has timely messages about the power of being a bit different, how collective responsibility is the way forward and, above all, the importance of looking after our planet. It’s never preachy, and it’s mostly a lot of fun as it envisions a technicolour world where the children of a town are left to their own devices because grown-ups have been kidnapped by the titular Creaker creatures who emerge at night from their underworld home to hoover up rubbish and express themselves in whimsical Yoda-like language.

It turns out that the Creakers are not the true villains at all, despite their horns, fangs and scaly tails, and the fact that their leader king bears an unsettling resemblance to the folkloric Christmas demon Krampus. They’re actually avid recyclers, finding use for objects the careless adults were chucking away or dumping into the ocean (Andrew Exeter’s colourful setting features lots of recycled items). Wright’s puppet design in tandem with the gleefully goofy characterisations by the cast makes these benign monsters more cute than scary even from the get-go, and Ryan Dawson Laight’s extravagant costumes are full of inventive touches.

Tom Jackson Greaves’ production has the air of a cartoon come to life, which feels about right, but it sometimes looks a bit lost on the wide open stage of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, where it’s currently enjoying a festive season. The unsympathetic playing area unhelpfully fudges the contrast between the sunny above-ground world and the murky subterranean one. Still, the show has a fizzing energy, which would be irresistibly engaging in a more intimate proscenium arch theatre. Here not all of the humour lands, which is a shame as Miranda Larson’s book has a sly, ready wit, matched by the performances, and the cast looks as though it needs another half dozen performers to really populate the space. Jackson Greaves’ high-energy choreography is an exuberant pleasure though, and the company sells it for all its worth.

The show is powered by Fletcher’s propulsive, melodic pop-rock score. I can think of umpteen grown-up musicals that would be immeasurably improved by having even a handful of these rousingly tuneful bangers, and The Creakers boasts 15 of them. It’s a varied collection of songs too, paying tribute to Fletcher’s roots in amiable rock but with surprising and pleasing forays into Music Hall, balladry and even Kander and Ebb territory. Fletcher clearly knows his way around musical theatre.

In a strong cast, Eloise Davies delights as a feisty, go-getting youthful heroine, and her slightly spiky relationship with her bin man Dad (Rakesh Boury, also wonderful) is presented with real affection and a lovely lightness of touch. Ally Kennard’s enthusiastic Scottish boy scout, who has merit badges for everything but no real friends, is another vivid, enjoyable creation, and Iona Fraser is a show-stealing scream as the town mayor’s daughter, a spoilt bossyboots who assumes leadership when her father goes missing and discovers it’s a lot harder than it looks (“helping other people is soooo boring!”).

The sound design is bizarre: quite often it’s possible to enjoy the multiple-part harmonies (the voices are uniformly superb) while having little idea of what the actors are singing about. Also, the breakneck speed the line delivery sometimes renders the dialogue unintelligible.

Despite these reservations, The Creakers is a big-hearted addition to the capital’s list of festive entertainments and a tangy alternative to more traditional Christmas fare. Its mindful messages are worth listening to, and so are its songs.