Book: Sam Cochrane
Music: David Fallon
Lyrics: Sam Cochrane and David Fallon
Director: Sam Cochrane
Scouting has been around for over 100 years – and is still going strong. A youth organisation, it seeks to give 
youngsters skills for life by encouraging personal responsibility, fostering good citizenship and promoting physical health. It’s underpinned by the Scout Law, which includes being trustworthy, useful and a friend to all. Scouts can work towards a number of badges in a range of activities, including music, surveying, and even inventing. Incidentally, in the show, we learn of a whole range of not-entirely-genuine badges in a well-executed and complex patter song from Scout Leader Dylan that would give Gilbert and Sullivan a run for their money.
Scouts! The Musical was developed in collaboration with Scouting. You might wonder if that would make the show rather dull and worthy, but then one might recall that this is a production by Gigglemug, a company that finds laughter and the absurd in the most unlikely places – Jaffa Cake, anyone?
We’re attending the Scout Games, a friendly set of challenges that will enable the participants to embody the Scout Law while competing for the coveted Golden Badge. We meet the Games Organiser, Dylan (Kemi Clarke) and competitors Eliza (Eleanor Fransch), Joe (Burhan Kathawala), Rosie (Katie Pritchard) and Luke (Rob Gathercole) (well, and some others).
We also learn of the events in the 1999 Scout Games won by Linus Lionheart (played gloriously OTT by Rob Gathercole), who is now an adventurer, conservationist and TV personality – any resemblance to Bear Grylls is no doubt 100% coincidental. The 1999 games, we learn, were almost subverted by Charlotte (Emily Kitchingham) using skills learned from the hastily withdrawn Hypnotism Badge. It soon becomes clear that Charlotte has returned to try and win back what she sees as having been stolen from her by Linus while subverting the entire basis of Scouting, thus destroying it forever.
We also quickly note that Eliza is very ambitious while Joe lacks self-confidence. After a shaky start, they become firm friends with complementary skills: by sticking to the Scout Law and drawing on their inner reserves and ingenuity, they are successful in thwarting the threat, and, eventually, all is well.
Along the way, there are songs, often comic, that nevertheless drive the story. The Act One closer, Braver is sung with gusto, sincerity and a belt to die for by Fransch, leading us into the interval strangely uplifted.
The entire cast are triple threats – in fact quadruple threats since all are also multi-instrumentalists accompanying the songs with drum, guitar, keyboards, sax, oboe, trumpet and flute. The comedic moments are delivered well, and while the characters are comic-bookish, they are still relatable – who hasn’t given in to temptation or felt isolated at some point? The whole rattles along and is genuinely wholesome family fun.
However, there are some issues – there’s a mostly absent narrator whose sole purpose seems to be to be the butt of jokes. But more notably at this performance, at least, was the sound balance. It’s a relatively small and intimate space surrounded by hard surfaces, which might play a part, but voices were occasionally drowned out by the instruments so that some lyrics were hard to catch.
Nevertheless, the whole is a respectful, if irreverent, tribute to scouting and great fun from start to finish. Gigglemug says that this tour is its final outing, so it’s worth catching it while you can!
Runs until 7 June 2025 and on tour
