Dismayed that, having switched to rain mode, the summer might already be over? Take heart, it isn't – the Classic Thriller Season's back. Murder Live is the first of this year's four.
This isn't a Durbridge so it's not set in London or the Home Counties but Cornwall instead. We're in the red-themed drawing room of Tressilick House, which, naturally enough, stands on an island cut off from the mainland. To compound the problem, there's no phone or internet communication either. In fact the play's an unembarrassed homage to Agatha Christie. After the break someone actually says "And then there was one".
Seven broad eccentrics: a representative sample of contemporary English types, plus Kirsty, the one sensibly balanced straight woman, played by Sarah Wynne Kordas, have been hired by some television people. Each has been recruited to take part in a TV reality show, oddly though, each for a different sounding show. It's a conscious up-date of all those plus fours and Norfolk Jacket thrillers from the golden age.
Karen Henson is Caitlin, the leggy Northern common one, with dresses short to the point of non-existence. She's OTT of course; but , along with a wandering Lancs/Merseyside, accent, Henson gives us a moment of poignancy as she surveys the wreckage of herself in front of the fourth wall mirror – that mirror's important in this play since it keeps getting taken for a two-way mirror.
An ex-army man (Jeremy Lloyd Thomas) is the one who says "All try and get some rest" – someone has to. Adrian Lloyd-James is ex copper, Marcus Kyle; Chris Sheridan is an annoying dynamo with a yoof street way of talking; Susie Hawthorne, back with the company after eighteen years, is a cocaine-sniffing ex-model; newcomer Angie Smith is timid spinster Moira; Susan Earnshaw, just come in from a brisk tramp on the moors, gets to be the hearty one in boots; Al Naed is the all-important boatman with a West Country accent and a line in local folk-lore.
The play, an excellent choice to kick off the Thriller Season, is written and directed by Mary Elliot Nelson.
Alan Geary
Read more: http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/Review-Murder-Live-Theatre-Royal-Alan-Geary/story-19584969-detail/story.html#ixzz2aevBDfQn
Follow us: @thisisnottm on Twitter | ThisIsNottingham on Facebook
This isn't a Durbridge so it's not set in London or the Home Counties but Cornwall instead. We're in the red-themed drawing room of Tressilick House, which, naturally enough, stands on an island cut off from the mainland. To compound the problem, there's no phone or internet communication either. In fact the play's an unembarrassed homage to Agatha Christie. After the break someone actually says "And then there was one".
Seven broad eccentrics: a representative sample of contemporary English types, plus Kirsty, the one sensibly balanced straight woman, played by Sarah Wynne Kordas, have been hired by some television people. Each has been recruited to take part in a TV reality show, oddly though, each for a different sounding show. It's a conscious up-date of all those plus fours and Norfolk Jacket thrillers from the golden age.
Karen Henson is Caitlin, the leggy Northern common one, with dresses short to the point of non-existence. She's OTT of course; but , along with a wandering Lancs/Merseyside, accent, Henson gives us a moment of poignancy as she surveys the wreckage of herself in front of the fourth wall mirror – that mirror's important in this play since it keeps getting taken for a two-way mirror.
An ex-army man (Jeremy Lloyd Thomas) is the one who says "All try and get some rest" – someone has to. Adrian Lloyd-James is ex copper, Marcus Kyle; Chris Sheridan is an annoying dynamo with a yoof street way of talking; Susie Hawthorne, back with the company after eighteen years, is a cocaine-sniffing ex-model; newcomer Angie Smith is timid spinster Moira; Susan Earnshaw, just come in from a brisk tramp on the moors, gets to be the hearty one in boots; Al Naed is the all-important boatman with a West Country accent and a line in local folk-lore.
The play, an excellent choice to kick off the Thriller Season, is written and directed by Mary Elliot Nelson.
Alan Geary
Read more: http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/Review-Murder-Live-Theatre-Royal-Alan-Geary/story-19584969-detail/story.html#ixzz2aevBDfQn
Follow us: @thisisnottm on Twitter | ThisIsNottingham on Facebook