Torban Betts began his playwriting career under the tutelage of Sir Alan Ayckbourn, and this comedy thriller has borrowed Ayckbourn’s use of multi-room sets, like a doll’s house.
Susie Blake and Jason Durr in Murder at Midnight | Photo © Pamela Raith Photography
There are four acting areas, including one outside, and the script calls for whole scenes where action takes place simultaneously in two or even all of these areas.
The dialogue has to overlap and sadly this creates some awkward pauses in action. Characters have to wait until they can speak, and it is hard to ignore actors miming in one room, thus missing whatever is being said in another.
We begin after a night of killing, then rewind to see how it all unfolded. The cast, led gamely by Jason Durr as Jonny and Susie Blake as his Mum, tackle the play with gusto and panache.
An East End drug dealer, his mysterious missing wife, batty Mother, foreign home help, girlfriend, undercover copper, bodyguard and burglar (in clown mask straight from the play Sleuth) are all linked. But how?
The answer, when it comes, has some surprises and revelations and the final scene, though slow, ties things up neatly. There are deaths, some shocking, some contrived, and eventually a sort of justice prevails.
This is a play that fans of murder mysteries, particularly Bett’s last play Murder In The Dark, will no doubt enjoy. There are some very funny moments and one or two shocks. One death made everyone jump.
It runs in Bath until Saturday 21st March, then tours to Darlington.
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Reviewer: Tony Burton
