A MURDER IS ANNOUNCED

A MURDER IS ANNOUNCED
Middle Ground Theatre Company 
at the Civic Theatre Chelmsford
03.11.2015
for The Reviews Hub

A typically solid touring production from Middle Ground, Agatha Christie's A Murder Is Announced, adapted for the West End back in the 70s by Leslie Darbon. 
It boasts a splendid set, designed by the show's director Michael Lunney – the 1950s powerfully evoked with everything, even the radiogram, in dark wood.
Little Paddocks is a large Victorian villa in Chipping Cleghorn, a sleepy village in “another world, where nothing happens”. Until a bizarre small ad in the local rag announces a murder …
Fortunately, Miss Jane Marple is on hand, taking the waters at a nearby spa. So she is able to help the local constabulary find their way through a tangle of plot twists, red herrings and double bluffs.
On the opening night of this leg of a lengthy tour, Judy Cornwell was unwell, so Cara Chase, who normally plays the nosy neighbour, stepped up into the tweedy two-piece to give us her “clever old busybody”. A nicely done Marple, sharp-witted but cool and collected. She heads a large cast, who, taking their cue from the furnishings perhaps, capture that lost world beguilingly.
Diane Fletcher is excellent as the doughty Letitia Blacklock – her dry wit and grande dame manners a constant delight. Her key scene with Chase is most effectively played.
An enjoyable Craddock from Tom Butcher – world-weary but drily droll. The large cast also boasts a comically hysterical migrant servant from Lydia Piechowiak, and a confused little old lady from Sarah Thomas. There's more to Edmund, the novelist son of Julie Bevan's Mrs Swettenham, than we get from Dean Smith's underpowered performance, but the two youngsters – dressed in a style that must have been old-fashioned even in the 50s – are persuasively done by Rachel Bright and Patrick Neyman. 
The staging is stylish without being showy. The black-out and the gunshots are excellently achieved. The prostrate form before and after the interval, too. Lynette Webster's original music is tunefully atmospheric, cleverly referencing the hymn-tune chosen for the funeral of the second victim.
It's a complicated plot, with the finger of suspicion pointed at most of those present. Dresden figurines, Devon violets, a financier's will, a rope of pearls, a Swiss clinic, a sealed door and the Delicious Death birthday cake all have their part to play.
It is not, and would not claim to be, great drama. “Mildly amusing” as one character says, after the manner of a Murder Mystery party. But in this assured revival it provides theatrical pleasures by no means confined to second-guessing Miss Marple.

THE BUSINESS OF MURDER

THE BUSINESS OF MURDER

Middle Ground Theatre Company at the Civic Theatre Chelmsford

21.04.2015

for The Public Reviews

A mild-mannered man, just the wrong side of middle age. His modest one-bed flat in the suburbs. A police detective - “clever, clever copper” and a woman who's had some success as a writer of police dramas for the television.

Such are the ingredients for Richard Harris's intricately plotted thriller. In the tradition of Sleuth or Deathtrap, our author has his characters playing games with each other as he plays games with his audience. It's all rather self-consciously meta-theatrical, with regular references to actors and scripts. Why are whodunnits so popular ? An eye on the box office… And it's one of Dee's tv plays that provides a spur to revenge in the festering mind of the master manipulator.

There's not a lot of action. There is a lot of talking, and after the interval the stakes, the tension and the voices are raised, before the double twist in the last ten minutes: there's a satisfying feeling of closure as the curtain falls, before we realise that the final twist of the knife depends on something that could never have been known for certain, a violent reaction which plays into his devious hands … “We must always have a dramatic ending !”

The characters – not always terribly convincing – are well cast. Paul Opacic makes a great 80s television cop, rough and ready, with his raincoat and his hat. Joanna Higson is the ambitious writer who uses him for research purposes. And Robert Gwilym is a delight as dotty “Mr Stone”, with his manic little giggle and his chilling mood swings. “People don't behave like me – or only in plays.” His obsessive, meticulous plotting and scheming, his consummate theatrical deceptions are redeeming features of an otherwise uninspiring drama.

Michael Lunney's production is impressively staged. Set in 1981, when the piece was written, it boasts a lovely period set: brown furniture, brown sauce on the coffee table, and an evocative street scene backdrop. There are references to Barlow and Watt, and Dunn & Co. The characters smoke indoors. Maybe thirty years ago audiences were held by this kind of wordy cat-and-mouse – it did have a long West End run back then, with Francis Matthews the original Stone - but I'm not convinced it's worth reviving today.

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST

Middle Ground Theatre Company

at the Mercury Theatre Colchester

22.10.2012

for The Public Reviews

This Middle Ground tour of Oscar's greatest hit has been around for a year or two. Last time, if memory serves, it had Tony Britton in it.

No such legends this time out, but a cast including many names from stage and the small screen, who together gave us a workmanlike, if ultimately uninspired, canter through the lapidary text.

It certainly looks good – the scenery is imposing: a lovely cloth of City of London churches for Act One, a classical garden for Act Two, a country house library, with the same horticultural backdrop, for Act Three. And the frocks were superb – Gwendolen's reticule, Aunt Augusta's formidable hats typical of the care lavished on these Edwardian outfits. And there's a lovely original score from Mat Larkin, featuring the violin of Lynette Webster.

As Miss Fairfax so rightly points out, style not sincerity is the vital thing. And it's not so much the farcical misunderstandings that lie at the heart of this piece, but the polished wit, bons mots and aphorisms. Not everyone is equally skilled at pointing a witty riposte, or indeed at timing the lines to extract every laugh from the willing audience.

It is perhaps a generation thing. Diane Fletcher's elegant Lady Bracknell is a true delight. Her inability to bring herself to pronounce the word "handbag" is a masterstroke, and even a line like "the unfashionable side" is imbued with deep shades of significance. David Gooderson is a game old parson, charmingly pursuing the prim Miss Prism of Sarah Thomas, and we are treated to a double domestic helping of Gerry Hinks, who gives us a suavely lugubrious Lane and a doddery, distracted Merriman.

In the opening scene, Algie [Jim Alexander] and Jack [Tom Butcher], resplendent in spats and moustaches, run through the dialogue at a spanking pace, with some lack of clarity. The objects of their affections, amusing in the garden duologue, sometimes come across more as the "purple of commerce" than the "ranks of the aristocracy" – a question of poise, deportment and subtlety.

On opening night at the Mercury, we hear mostly ripples of laughter, rather than gales. But the audience seems to enjoy this fitfully diverting revival of this most bankable of classic comedies.

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews