On Friday night at The Mansion, I witnessed the Queen’s Players’ most recent attack on cheek muscles and social stupidity, entitled Scooby-Doo! Wherefore Art Thou?  

Before the event started, the light tone of the night was made clear by a slideshow of Snapchats the cast members had taken. This slideshow, combined with the cramped bar packed to the gills with audience members, preluded the performance with a sudsy and light-hearted atmosphere. 

Director Jeremy Settle, ArtSci’17, began the show by explaining the traditions of Queen’s Players performances that were to follow, like yelling “seamless” if one of the Players visibly fumbled their lines, or yelling “sing” when the title of a tune is spoken in hopes of getting a song out of the cast member. Also, Settle asked the audience to buy the performers beer, a unique aspect of Players that adds to the performers’ and the 

audience’s experience. 

This rendition of Queen’s Player’s show is a parody of Big Brother, featuring the likes of Kylie Jenner, Shrek, Romeo and Juliet, Daenerys Stormborn and hosted by Barney Stinson. The characters were fully-fleshed out and funny as they delivered satirical skits and songs on topics ranging from selfies and random hookups, to our apparent obsession with telling people we’re from Toronto.

The cast mixed these characters’ clichés with hilarious quirks like Romeo claiming allegiance to ‘the 6ix’ throughout the show, a horny Marge Simpson and Velma and Shaggy’s breakup amid her philandering. 

It really sunk in that I was watching something special when Romeo sang both Enrique and Pitbull’s parts in ‘I Like It’, while working in Toronto landmarks. At one point, Shrek — whose green makeup was starting to show its age by this point in the show — donned a straw cowboy hat and managed to get out a plethora of song titles before settling on ‘Save A Horse Ride A Cowboy’. 

Yeah, the narrative was a little iffy in the show, but not necessarily different from trying to navigate To The Lighthouse or a Dardenne brothers movie. It delivered critiques of social norms, revealing their silliness, without making social satire it’s only feature. 

Barney Stinson, flamboyant but still in-the-closet, opened the show by introducing us to the people in the house. Like most reality shows, the performance featured a series of challenges that the characters had to accomplish to keep going. 

They built snowmen, with Marge’s addition of a penis to hers arousing everyone’s disgust. A running gag throughout was Velma losing her glasses, hilariously hindering her throughout the show. The best example of this was during the ski-trip skit, when she pleaded with everyone to help her off the lift because she couldn’t see it, but the other characters just talked over her the whole time.

It turned out that Kylie Jenner had stolen the glasses because they looked good in selfies.  

As the show progressed, the man next to me in our row of three, began talking a bit and it turned out he was the father of the girl playing Juliet. After he bought me a beer — I got him one in return — I realized this show was like no other. Rather than keeping to yourself, it was a concert where you bonded with complete strangers around you through laughing and dancing. 

Queen’s Players have accomplished something wonderful with Scooby-Doo! Wherefore Art Thou? It’s ruminations on the selfie-laced hookup culture, it’s songs, it’s sexiness, made this a show that I’ll remember as best I can, and given the intoxicated atmosphere of the room, I’m sure I’m not the only one.