A SHAGGY, DOG STORY 'SCOOBY-DOO IN STAGEFRIGHT' BRINGS BELOVED CHARACTERS TO LIVE THEATER.

Byline: Vicki Smith Paluch Correspondent

DIRECTOR Jim Millan still remembers the Saturday morning when the first episode of ``Scooby-Doo'' aired on television in 1969. He was 8 years old, living in Canada, and he had never seen anything like it before - cartoon characters dressed in flower-power garb and driving in a funky van. They burst on the screen as the first teenage cartoon anti-heroes.

As the director of ``Scooby-Doo in Stagefright - Live on Stage,'' Millan has created a multimillion-dollar homage to the Scooby he saw in his childhood.

``Scooby-Doo in Stagefright'' will make its Southern California debut Wednesday for a five-day engagement at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.

Presented as a long-lost episode of the late-1960s cartoon series, the gang drives in its Mystery Machine to Chicago, where pretty Daphne's uncle is making a horror film for Clawhammer Pictures. It seems the set is haunted by a ghost intent on driving away the film's stars and stealing jewels from the set.

Daphne and her pals - Fred, the stiff know-it-all American boy; Velma, the ugly-duckling brain; Shaggy and Scooby - take it upon themselves to figure out who, or what, is behind the mysterious goings on.

In adapting the beloved animated cartoon series for the stage, Millan, who also wrote the play, said he set out to ``do a big American stage comedy'' that remains true to the original cartoon.

``I wanted to lend the sense that the actors are stepping into the world of cartoons while on stage,'' said Millan, 42, whose Crow's Theatre is an incubator for avant garde theater pieces.

To accomplish his goal, Millan decided to use the original orchestrations for the Hanna-Barbera cartoon series and old-time sound effects such as the clapping of hollow coconuts for the sound of footsteps on a staircase.

The orchestrations and sound effects may be straight out of the 1969 cartoon, but the actors deliver their own lines. No click tracks of prerecorded lines like families hear in such popular kiddie stage shows as ``Sesame Street.''

Bjorn Thorstad's voice is a dead-ringer for that of Shaggy. The 20-something actor, unlike the director-writer Millan, was not a ``Scooby-Doo'' fanatic when he was a kid, but he loved listening to ``Casey Kasem's American Top 40'' on the radio when he was growing up in Colorado.

Eventually Thorstad got to the point where he could imitate Kasem's laid-back and cool delivery. Kasem created the voice of Shaggy, and Thorstad has nailed Kasem's tenor and attack, judging from a brief sample heard during a telephone interview.

``There are certain aspects of Shaggy I cannot change: the screechy voice, his laid-back, sardonic attack, the whole Casey Kasem attitude that is Shaggy,'' Thorstad said.

Thorstad, who created the stage Shaggy when the show opened last year before it went on a seven-month hiatus, said he has returned to the character with more confidence and a desire to ``stretch'' Shaggy, making the comedy bigger and better.

``Scooby and I, we are the bait - the lure - and we're always running away from the ghost/bad guys. We do all the hard work,'' he said. ``I'm on stage 77 percent of the time.''

``Physically, the actors have created their own sense of animated movement,'' Millan said. ``The stage magic allows for the quick changes that one would think possible only in a cartoon. Shaggy runs into a closet and immediately comes out in another costume.''

Though Fred thinks he's the leader of the gang, we all know our heroes in solving mysteries are Shaggy and Scooby, who uncover every lead unwittingly. It's enough to make a person hungry for a Scooby snack.

And they will sell them during intermission, along with light-up wands and other ``Scooby-Doo'' merchandise.

The play debuted last year on the East Coast and Midwest just prior to the release of the ``Scooby-Doo'' movie. Both are part of the Warner Bros. machine, but the play has received kudos from the critics, while the movie did not. Neither Millan nor Thorstad would comment on the movie.

The stage production was developed to appeal to parents who grew up watching ``Scooby-Doo'' on TV and to kids discovering Scooby-Doo for the first time.

``This is a legitimate theatrical experience,'' Thorstad said. ``It's part commedia dell'arte! and vaudeville. It has dance numbers, and it's filled with music. Kids, who watch the show every day on TV, relate the show back to the cartoons.''

But inside the theater, ``The kids can cheer on Scooby and Shaggy and have an effect,'' he said. ``They can have a relationship with the characters.''

By setting the play's action at a movie studio, Millan and his gang could go wild with theater magic, including monsters, trap doors, mirrors, costumes - everything one would find at a movie studio where a horror picture is being made.

``It's great fun to do a big American comedy,'' said Millan. ``We've got elaborate chase scenes in hallways that verge on the Marx Brothers or Abbott and Costello.''

SCOOBY-DOO IN STAGEFRIGHT

Where: Kodak Theatre, Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, Hollywood.

When: 7 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. April 5 and 6.

Tickets: $19 to $40. Call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Scooby-Doo!

Where are you?

At the Kodak Theatre for `Scooby-Doo in Stagefright'

(2) Bjorn Thorstad, who created the stage character of Shaggy in ``Scooby-Doo in Stagefright,'' returns to the role opposite his canine friend in the production at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre.

(3 -- 4) ``Scooby Doo in Stagefright'' is presented like a long-lost episode of the beloved cartoon series. The gang must solve the mystery of why a ghost, at top, is haunting a movie set.

Box:

SCOOBY-DOO IN STAGEFRIGHT (see text)