When American pharmaceutical executive Hiram B Otis moves to Britain and looks for a place to rent with his wife, teenage daughter and 11-year-old twin sons he will settle for nothing less than a house with a resident ghost. Canterville Chase, a gothic pile with a moat, fits the bill perfectly.
The owner, the current Lord Canterville, and his family have long retreated to the gatehouse because the ghost of their ancestor, Sir Simon de Canterville, who murdered his beautiful wife in a jealous rage 400 years previously, has been clanking his chains and wailing rather too loudly. Nobody can get a decent night's sleep. But can any ghost be a match for the tearaway Otis twins? Can the beautiful teenager, Virginia Otis, help wash away the guilt of four centuries and bring peace to Canterville Chase? Will the entire cast suddenly break into song?
Southwark has a reputation for coming up with something a little different at Christmas, and this is so different that I doubt that even its original author Oscar Wilde would recognise it. Imagine if Wilde had suddenly developed the sensibility of a mischievous, practical joke-playing nine-year-old boy and the ear of Andrew Lloyd Webber and you have something of the flavour of this musical that takes Wilde's 19th-century ghost story, updates it, and turns it into a bit of a romp for the Scary Movie generation. Done as a play within a play as performed by the kind of travelling troupe who are a "great favourite with the National Trust" it has a certain clumsy charm. But, like everything else in this show, the charm soon turns out to be phantom and, although the whole thing is high-spirited, you can't always tell whether some of the performances are deliberately over the top or just over the top.
· Until December 23. Box office: 0870 060 1761.
