Audience with Murder

“Audience with Murder” is an extremely well written but very complicated piece of writing by Colin Wakefield and Roger Leach. Throughout the performance we are witnesses to poisonings, stabbings, shootings and a man having a heart attack being deliberately ignored. Add to this, a knife causing some serious bleeding, and you have a pretty grim idea of the horror enacted. The biggest shock, however, is that at the very end, it is revealed that not a single crime has been committed, and the characters are quite normal and reasonable people who are writing, directing or appearing in a play about a murder thriller.

The difficulty in understanding what was happening until the final ‘reveal’ is that each character plays three, four or five parts. George (Andy Bates) a.k.a Gerald/Alan/Vernon was the grumpy, critical, politically incorrect person. Sally (Laine Watson) a.k.a. Sue/Vivienne was a confident person and a force to be reckoned with.  Kim (Suzanne Page) a.k.a. Hannah/Kelly/Simone was another actress. Charles (Patrick Casey) a.k.a. Sebastian/Dean/Inspector McTavish/Matt had the amazing task of taking on five character parts. All these four actors coped for ninety minutes with the fast and moving dialogue without effort  or hesitation.

Of course, although a supposed ‘Murder Mystery’, there were quite a lot of laughs and a soupçon of comedy as we realise that this is in fact a play within a play. Scenery was simply a living room and sound and lighting cues executed efficiently.

Convincing acting on stage together with laughs and  combined with our concentration on the complexity of the plot and the unexpected ending, made this a very enjoyable piece of theatre.Thanks and congratulations to all involved, on stage, backstage, technical and production team.

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