Night Must Fall is, in some respects, similar to the last show I saw at the Everyman, When We Are Married. Both are very English plays written by established stalwarts of the British stage, both written in the mid-1930s and both plays were very popular in their day, especially in rep – and both were largely forgotten for forty years. While the revival of the Priestley play is certainly a good thing, the wisdom of mounting a new production of the Emlyn Williams “classic” is less so.
While Priestley’s play is good, solid stuff which has something valid to say and says it very well, Night Must Fall is a flimsy pot-boiler thriller of the Agatha Christie type whose author was nowhere in the same class as either of them.
The story is fairly basic – a lonely house in the middle of a dark forest with a murderer on the loose. Although the house is presented in this production as a quaint, beamed cottage it seems remarkably full of people. There’s the old lady who owns it, her young companion, a maid, a cook, a visiting nurse, a neighbour who is a permanent fixture and then, if there weren’t enough elbows jostling for position, young Dan charms his way into the household.
The decapitated body of a young woman has been found in the garden. The victim was staying at a nearby hotel where cheeky Dan was a page boy. Among Dan’s luggage, when he moves into the cottage, is a head-size top hat box – what could possibly be in there, we all wonder.
The problem with the play was that we knew exactly what had happened and who did it and we all knew exactly what was going to happen and who would do it. Usually in these whodunits there is an element of suspense, a few twists in the tail, a few blind alleys, the odd red herring and a bit of legerdemain. Not so with Night Must Fall. A few hesitant attempts at twists in the plot came to nothing and it was all rather predictable. The only scene that came close to building tension was when the old lady found herself alone in the house and started to scream – and scream and scream. She was more in danger of dying of exhaustion than of being murdered.
The direction was also a bit dodgy with most of the characters having an unnatural fondness for and attraction to the comfy sofa in the middle of the room which was in turn was jumped on, kneeled on (see picture above), laid on, leaned on, fondled on and feinted on.
Nevertheless, if you went with it, Night Must Fall was quite entertaining. The set was nicely done and there were some good performances. Gwen Taylor was excellent as the bitter, wheelchair-bound old lady and Niamh McGrady was good as her bookish, bespectacled young companion who managed to convey the feeling that if she removed her glasses and let her hair down might turn into something altogether quite different. Will Featherstone as Dan was a bit odd, even for an odd person, but was believable as the chancer who managed to inveigle his way into the household and affections of the old lady on the strength of his boyish charms. Daragh O’Malley was also a bit odd as the Scotland Yard detective.
So, all in all, a not bad production of a not very good play. ★★★☆☆ Michael Hasted 9th November 2016
