Andrew Cormier, Cameron Chapman, Bella King, Natalie Czar in SCOOBIE DOOSICAL. Photo by BB Collective

SCOOBIE DOOSICAL (Stage 4, Walterdale Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Well gang, looks like we have another mystery on our hands (a couple, actually).

One (a Fringe specialty) is the mystery of inspiration. With their new musical, Dammitammy Productions’ resident playwright/composer muse Rebecca Merkley finds a kooky outlier of an idea. It bounces gaily off a ‘70s cartoon so earnestly dopey it’s achieved vintage stoner status as a classic. (Side note: never let it be said there is no place at the Fringe for the classics).

A gang of teenage sleuths and a talking Great Dane on a perpetual quest for Scooby snacks: that’s what Merkley is working with, in this high-speed four-actor musical. SCOOBIE DOOSICAL isn’t a spoof exactly (spoofing a spoof is like capturing air in a sieve); it’s more like an homage. And Scoob, played by the delightful Bella King, is the hero, both put-upon and infinitely forgiving, and devoted to the inept nice guy Shag (Cameron Chapman).

There’s a mystery, involving a villain; the evil and homophobic Professor Riggleruffs (Andrew Cormier) is hot for revenge, or maybe world domination (lucky for the world, he’s a Luddite) and he’s terrible to his glum cat Kyle (Natalie Czar), always a bad sign. There’s non-stop activity: chase scenes (through a toy mansion), car rides, adventures in the woods (“rustle rustle” says Czar wielding a branch for verisimilitude). Periodically there are ad breaks, with jingles, starring the increasingly exasperated L’il Stinks (King).

SCOOBIE DOOSICAL, Dammitammy Productions, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo by BB Collective

There’s big fun in watching Cormier and Czar quick-change wigs and  characters (their near-misses are funny, too), faster and faster — and annotate (“wow, creepy laughter”). The cat doubles as crisis-prone Daphne; Cormier is also the bespectacled smartie Velma.

SCOOBIE DOOSICAL is a veritable barrage of dog and cat jokes, and lightly tossed contemporary allusions of all sorts — to musicals, to theatre, to politics, capitalism, the state of the world, to gun control, to text-speak, homophobia, and political correctness. AND it’s a musical about love and loss and the terrors of growing up, which borrows from Sondheim’s Into The Woods (“no one is alone”) and Company. Sondheim and Scooby Doo: it’s a first.

Merkley’s songs, which range from pop-y Pedal to the Metal to musical theatre ballads (“I’m seeing you brand new for the very first time”), have clever, rhymed lyrics. From what I could hear, that is. At the opening performance the clangy sound mix favoured the keyboards (Yvonne Boon) so extremely they were often inaudible, alas.

There’s a real original at work in this fledgling musical. It’s bright, it’s fun, it’s full (possibly over-crammed) with theatrical ideas, and it doesn’t shy away from poignance. So far it feels like it’s in sketch form coming at you, a discovery with a future. And that’s something the Fringe is for.