Tom Fletcher’s The Creakers – Southbank Centre, London

Book: Miranda Larson

Music and Lyrics: Tom Fletcher

Director: Tom Jackson Greaves

A world without adults is a sound basis for a children’s adventure story and Tom Fletcher’s musical The Creakers ticks a number of festive family show boxes with brave children pulling together to solve a mystery, scary creatures to battle and a familiar environment that turns into a magical underworld. With lots of plot and character points to establish and a solo for all the key performers, it takes this production at the Southbank Centre a little while to get to the creakers themselves and doesn’t fully establish their initial scare factor, although the tighter second half ups the stakes nicely.

With a binman as a father, Lucy feels different to the other children on Clutter Avenue and is teased by the neighbours, but with rubbish piling up the mayor decides to ship the detritus out to sea incurring the wrath of the creakers who parent-nap the adults leaving the children alone. Embracing the opportunity to do whatever they like, only Lucy is certain that finding her father is what they should be doing instead and concocts a way to confront the creatures after dark in her bedroom.

As a family show, puppetry is key to the creation of the creakers, first seen as only a set of eyes illuminated in the darkness as they appear under Lucy’s bed. Later in Act One, the audience gets to see these dragon-like creatures with giraffe necks in full glory, worn by the actors as coats, bodysuits and harnesses to embody the creakers and allow them to dance and sing. Adults can be assured that these are not too scary for the 6+ age range and perhaps they’re even rather sweet with a love of garbage and cleaning that actually seems to help the human world after dark.

But the show could do more to draw out the ambiguity and suspense a little more at the start of the show to add to the anticipation, perhaps having the children discuss the noises under their bed and the fears of the dark that this plays into, helping to build the tension and relief when the creakers appear. Instead, too much of Act One is spent on solos and family dramas that explain Lucy’s relationships, those of her friends-to-be and the nature of the town. It is a lot of information to take in across a lot of songs.

The second part of The Creakers commutes all that establishing narrative into more action as Lucy enters the underworld to locate the parents, packing far more into this part of the story along with a resolution that creates a satisfactory outcome all round – one with a topical climate message and an insight into the real lives of the creakers that adds an important note of relatability that feeds into an all-encompassing conclusion.

With younger audience members are unlikely to notice, it is the songs rather than the sketchy and overstrung plot that will entertain the adults, and while there are too many of them – some of which last too long – the storytelling and vocal quality of the performers, especially, Eloise Davies’s Lucy, Rakesh Boury as Larry, Lucy’s Dad and Mayor’s daughter Ella (Iona Fraser), give the bin-loving creakers and the audience plenty to pick through.

Runs Until 5 January.