Anybody For Murder?

Max and Janet Harrington live in a remote farmhouse on a remote Greek Island where their vineyard is failing miserably. Max has a lover, Suzy, and between them they plot to kill Janet in order to claim her £50,000 insurance money. Then along come the Ticklewells with news of a million dollar legacy for Janet. From then on chaos reigns with mistaken identities, murder plots and diappearing bodies.

The team of actors assembled for this production was excellent and they kept up the slick pace with lots of well timed opening and closing of doors.

Their strength came into play when the actor taking the role of Max had to withdraw due to ill health. His place was taken by Nevin Ward who fell into the part with ease and with strong support from the rest of the cast he really saved the day.

Debbie Forsyth as his wife Janet and Carol Bailey as his lover Suzy were strong in their parts and coped well with the confusion caused by mistaken identities.

The Ticklewells were a sombre contrast to to the rest of the brightly clad cast. The domineering wife Mary Ticklewell (Rachel Smith) and her downtrodden husband George (Keith Burton) brought many laughs from the audience. To add to the confusion neighbour Edgar Chambers (Michael Thorne) finds quite a few ideas  from the chaos for the book he is writing.

A lovely, brightly lit set of a Greek farmhouse was beautifully furnished and I liked how the set had been used to show different areas of the house. The sound of the sea when the farmhouse doors opened was very impressive.

As with all good murder mysteries there was an unexpected twist at the end, certainly not one I was expecting.

A well directed play that flowed well and had great  timing with all the entrances and exits.

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