A Tomb With A View

A comedy murder mystery should be satisfyingly ridiculous while still drawing you in to try to solve what’s going on, and Norman Robbins’ A Tomb With A View is exactly the right choice for this. Clever in some places: with clues dropped all over including misdirection and red herrings, and farce in others: coming and going through so many doors and secret passage ways, not to mention the flamboyant, beautifully ridiculous and extreme characters.

The stage is set as the library in the family house, in an opulent room with leather looking sofa. The stage is small but they make such good use of the space, using the areas on downstage far right and far left as well. There is quite a bit of furniture but it doesn’t look cluttered. The French doors on stage right are lit separately to glimpse the grounds, there is the impression of night-time and moonlight which is lovely. The whole set is dominated by a large crazy portrait, we discover of recently deceased Septimus Tomb, which brings the family together for the reading of the will: the purpose of the play. The portrait is reminiscent of Marty Feldman, especially in Mel Brooks Young Frankenstein, which really helps set the tone for the evening: it’s a really wonderful touch. When one of the book cases swings slowly open as part of the action there is a little gasp in the audience as it’s unexpected. The whole set looks brilliant.

The collection of characters in the family couldn’t be more different from each other and the characterisation just shies away from stereotype which is lovely, showing some sensitive direction from Alison Shapley. The entire cast look like they are enjoying themselves which is essential in a comedy as it effuses to the audience. The director and cast have worked on maximising the humour at every possible turn both in the language of the script and in staging and the portrayal of the characters, and it’s super to see such creativity. The cast are lovely, with two standout performances from Jon Hope as the toga wearing Marcus Tomb who thinks he’s Caesar and quotes Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar all the way through the play; and Teresa Carlile as the crazy black widow poisoner Dora Tomb. While Jon’s toga wearing is funny, when he wears a suit but still wears his Caesar leaf crown it’s even funnier causing a guffaw moment, as he does when he walks into the door as it’s closing: perfect straight faced comedy timing, extremely well done. Teresa’s reactions to the mentions of Police, or even the imagined mentions of the Police are really funny, as is every time she appears wearing a slightly different wrap or scarf, for no reason, but it works so very well as an extra funny moment. Her lunatic gusto while singing a children’s song is hilarious. Both Teresa and Jon are so completely in character the whole time, never losing focus and always huge fun to watch, with such lovely detail added to their performances making their crazy characters very believable. Sadie Ghinn-Morris as the caring, stoic but hiding a deeper motive nurse, Anthony Barden as crazy scientist Lucien and Niki Field as the sex mad Monica all have lovely moments too.

Comedies like this benefit from a cracking pace, and while prompts can’t be helped, they do interrupt the flow, taking the audience and cast sometimes out of the moment of performing, and slow things down. More and more companies are now performing without prompting in the show at all, preferring performance over perfection in lines, which the audience ultimately benefits from. However, this is a lovely show, and congratulations to everyone involved in it including the director Alison Shapley who has done a super job.

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