An Eye for an Eye

The players carefully set our brains to concentrate, to question and ultimately decide who done the Baroness in!

Good to see a busy auditorium arranged with numbered tables where my colleague and I joined two local supporters smack in the middle, at Table 8.  We were welcomed by Malcolm Atfield who was unusually hall side performing the role of Fire Officer, also later putting good point questions to the DI. Imogen was patrolling the door and Margaret Osgood was at her box office table, later to play Olivia who politely greeted the guests in a private pod on the London Eye. Raffles were duly purchased, and we set to study the ‘Eye for an Eye’ suspect sheet nicely produced giving cast details with mug shots which was very useful. First produced in 2015 this version had slight changes in storyline.

The scene was set – with well-designed and painted backdrop depicting iconic London monuments, a fully stocked bar to the side with chairs placed around centre stage and Baroness Grady seated to one side.

So, five Heads of Departments of a big company are invited, arrive, duly greeted assuming this was an annual outing, given badges and a pen each,  offered drinks for the duration of the pod trip, however there is a suspicion of underlying problems, so each is to be interviewed and questioned in turn.  All have fairly plausible reasons for skeletons and failings and two it seems have relationships to BG herself.  The trip is over,  all gather round  centre stage where BG is sitting and in the hurried collection of belongings confusion it is discovered she is not just sitting there, but that she is quite dead! We didn’t see the Baroness again – a very good portrayal from Bea Dixon with her little notebook and delving questioning.

Suspects are now seated in a lineup front of stage. Tough DI authoritatively played by Gary Pope sporting a Poirot black homburg  takes questions from the body of the hall, also telling us that in fact Baroness Grady was murdered for a small puncture wound if found in her neck. Motive? From A/Cs,  Phillipa  is convincingly played by Margaret Punter – she admits she has a male model toyboy Wayne Armstrong who just happens to be BG’s son and needs plenty of cash to keep him. Lyn Ford performed in the know Secretary Cynthia – she had the safe combo and she has seen stashed papers suggesting the possibility of a takeover of the company, this info she could sell to the press, and she quite fancied another life. Then design head Dawn, quietly played by Jenny Taylor was also selling off her own designs on the side. Next  interviewed, Margo head of the selling and marketing and she had been blackmailed to tweak CV’s and employ relatives and others when all along there were redundancy plans afoot - played comfortably, in an unassuming manner by Val Yates. Lastly, we had young buyer Bridget, Jac Young with pigtails who ‘aint done nothink’ who had a bad gambling habit, hugely in debt and seemed unduly undisturbed by this and was BG’s goddaughter! Who then gained from her demise?

After much questioning from the audience and our table in a quandary we four decided upon Margo but struggled with motives and clues. We were right, but Table 9 were better detectives, and their reasoning was conclusive.   

Well written by Elisabeth, nice balanced solo direction by Maureen as Elisabeth was indisposed, and after a fun word quiz and raffle drawn with two winners on our table, of course Margo was duly arrested for Baroness Grady’s murder, cuffed and was led away. Thank you to the team again for your hard work in creating this Murder Mystery and for the kind hospitality shown.

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