The Court Theatre’s current school holiday offering takes full advantage of the October spooky season. The new family-friendly play, Escape from Haunted House by Brendon Bennetts and Kathleen Burns, is a delightful genre romp that combines a big dripping bucket of kid-friendly horror tropes with enough grown up wit to keep the adults snickering through their coffees.

Sally the Mad Scientist (Hillary Moulder) is getting ready to bring to life her newest creation, a stitched-together, easily trained monster called Frank (Robbie Hunt). However, Sally’s also holding someone else captive: Veronica, a young vampire who is so freaked out that her powers are failing her, and she can’t turn into a bat and fly away. While Sally is out of the lab, Veronica befriends Frank and the two attempt to make their escape from Sally’s haunted house, although there are a few hiccups. Frank is friendly but not very smart, Veronica needs our help in controlling him, and the confusing interior of the ghoulish mansion is populated by mysterious creatures and supernatural surprises.

The interactive show, directed by Dan Bain, asks for a lot of direct participation from the young audience, whose dance skills, singing voices and bubble popping abilities are used to help the pair escape. Persistent use of direct address, strong characterisation, and a great deal of physical and verbal humour ensure that the level of spookiness fits well within a child-friendly comic gothic. It also helps that from the outset the baddie is shown to be fallible and a little bit silly, and that our two heroes (and the audience with them) must learn to be brave and rely on their friendship.

The actors, all of whom are members of the Court Theatre’s improvised comedy company The Court Jesters, generate a strong rapport with the young audience. I particularly love Moulder’s physically deft, googly-eyed rendition of wild-haired Sally. She does an excellent job of setting the tongue-and-cheek tone and establishing the rules of participation, while absolutely nailing her archetype.

Escape from Haunted House is a coherent, thoughtfully designed show that takes full advantage of the dusty, well-apportioned garage set for the mainstage show The Pink Hammer. Sally’s clandestine workshop features mysterious objects draped in sheets, peculiar things in jars, and scientific equipment that needs ongoing attention. Later, as Veronica and Frank make their way through the house, the actors move tall, three-sided set pieces, which create new rooms, secret passages and hidden doors. It’s a lovely conceit that keeps the action moving briskly and sets up puzzles for the characters: how do we get a key from a living painting? How do we evade various alarms and guards? Details and unexpected gaps in the set pieces keep changing, giving a satisfyingly confused sense of place.

Other design elements – costumes, make up, props – find a cheerful balance between scary and silly. There are also some snappy and often funny shifts in light and sound. Everything feels as if it has been put together with great care and affection – unlike, perhaps, Frank, although both he and Veronica find their own way to happiness, and freedom, by the end.

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