23 – 27 September
Murder mystery as a genre is a theatrical furrow which has been thoroughly ploughed in recent years. A carousel of touring shows comprises both spoofs and straight dramas, often featuring many of the same actors: Jason Durr, tonight’s lead as crime boss Jonny “The Cyclops” Drinkwater appeared in Cluedo 2; Katie Glynn, Jonny’s girlfriend, joined serial detective George Rainsford in Wish You Were Dead; Susie Blake, who steals this latest show as Jonny’s mother, featured in writer Torben Betts’ previous stab at the genre, Murder in the Dark alongside Tom Chambers who, coincidentally, is currently resurrecting Inspector Morse on stage in House of Ghosts. And round we go again.
And yet this saturated market seems to repeatedly draw large audiences. Director Phillip Franks sees this as the next in a growing series of Murder instalments à la Peter James’ Dead stable in order to provide a “Saturday evening entertainment” feel which clearly appeals, especially to an older demographic. This latest offering from a very busy and award-winning Original Theatre company is a madcap, high-energy satire of East London gangster culture: several characters converge on Drinkwater’s luxury Kentish mansion, including his long-term criminal associate, his mother and girlfriend, an undercover police officer and a hapless burglar. All are doomed, desperate and flawed characters in some recognisable and humanly relatable way, overblown caricatures who are drawn into Jonny’s criminal underworld. Much cartoonish hamming up ensues as we alternate between genuine humour and, at times, some surprisingly realistic and gruesome demises. Franks calls to mind “a Jacobean drama…. wild and savage and completely unafraid to put high comedy cheek by jowl with terrible violence”. Indeed the show comes complete with a string of advisories and trigger warnings. (No pun intended). Midsomer Murders this is not.
Durr’s performance is more Boycey than Reggie Kray and while Glynn, in full Cockney mode, and Max Bowden as a largely ineffective police officer, also throw plenty of relish into their performances, it is Blake who steals the plaudits for a role which gets most of the witty script’s best lines.
The action is played out in a clever pod-type construction with five different locations stretched both horizontally and vertically across the stage. Whilst this means the action can take place simultaneously (and sometimes confusingly) in different rooms without the need for scene changes, freeze-framing or more effective use of lighting could have made these transitions more obvious and distinct. Furthermore, many of those audience members in the ends of rows may unfortunately have a restricted view due to the width of the set design and the sightlines of the Everyman’s slightly narrower Proscenium arch.
The show barrels along at speed through some familiar generic territory and with some occasional hints at dramatic tension. I’m not sure this tale, like many of its murder mystery stablemates, has anything particularly new or important to say about the human condition, but nor does it have any pretences or obligation to do so. Sometimes we just want to enjoy the comfortable reassurance of a murder mystery where good largely prevails over evil. Until, that is, in the final lines of the play when Jonny’s Romanian maid opines that “Hell is empty and all the devils are here” a rather incongruous, philosophical nod to Shakespeare concerning the presence of evil in human behaviour, which admittedly comes as something of a surprise after the previous ninety minutes of enjoyable spoofery.
★★★☆☆ Tony Clarke, 25 September 2025
Photography credit: Pamela Raith Photography
