Eunice, the housekeeper of the Coverdale household, meanders through the house and lets in the investigators to look at the crime scene again. All four members of the family were gunned down in their living room on Valentine’s Day. What follows is the bifurcated tale of the events leading up to the murder and the subsequent investigation, all through the eyes of the withdrawn and solitary Eunice.
Ruth Rendell’s lauded crime novel A Judgement in Stone has been newly adapted courtesy of Bill Kenwright and directed by Roy Marsden – himself a veteran of appearing in and directing crime procedurals, not least in Cheltenham last year with Rehearsal for Murder. This is very much a successor to the work of the Agatha Christie Theatre Company’s work and will prove very satisfying to fans of police procedurals and crime thrillers.
You can tell this is a quintessentially British play because it’s all about class. Despite being set in the 1970s, it is amazing – and depressing – how many of our social hang-ups are still relevant. For all the intrigue of plot (something absent from the book where the identity of the murder is known from the off and the plot plays out in the grim foreknowledge of their resolution), the strength of the piece is the cannily observed nuances of class and resentment in the Coverdale household. The Coverdales are cultured and wealthy, but their well-intentioned manners do not disguise their patronising and condescending tone, or their aloof position in the community. One the other side we have the characters on the lower end of the social spectrum who say ‘university’ as though it were a dirty word and covet the assets of the Coverdales which they don’t see as earned. For all the appearances of a functioning little family in a pleasant little village, Rendell’s work peels back the layers of venom coursing through everyone.
The cast does a good job of communicating these distinctions of class, standing and education before they even speak. Sophie Ward as Eunice signals her insecurity and timidity through her gait and costume before she tentatively offers herself up to speak. On the other end of the spectrum, we have Mark Wynter whose strident demeanour as Mr Coverdale tells you all you need to know of a man who is assured and confident in his authority before he addresses anyone with his booming voice. One of the scenes that best demonstrates this is the immediate tension between the slovenly-dressed gardener with a rural accent (Anthony Costa) with the well-turned out DCI from London (Andrew Lancel).
There is sadly one rum note in this affair. When the heinous act is finally committed on stage, the production opts for a far more camp approach than is expected. The tone is slapstick and seems dissonant with the rest of the play. The fact that chuckles were raised from the audience at this point surely cannot have been the director’s intent. I’m loathe to make recommendations to a production but perhaps framing the more lurid details off-stage or even fading out of the scene as the guns fire would have been more chilling. In fairness, the play does work hard to re-establish a more sombre tone in the aftermath but it’s a crucial point to stumble on.
But for this, I could give A Judgement in Stone a much stronger recommendation. As it is, I feel I should at least admonish the prospective audience member that the enjoyment of the piece is not couched in the big reveal. ★★★☆☆ Fenton Coulthurst 10th May 2017
Photo by Mark Yeoman
