Curtain Up On Murder

With a title like ‘Curtain Up On Murder’ you’d possibly take an educated guess that the piece would be a thriller? When in fact, although having a diluted horror theme running through it, the play could quite easily be billed as a comedy, a whodunit, a ghost story, a romance (at a stretch) or even a melodrama in some parts!

The play hasn’t had much success on the professional stage though seems to be a popular choice amongst the community theatre / am dram circuit. The writing ventures down several avenues but rarely seems to break the surface in terms of the characters and their individual stories keeping it quite light and open to interpretation.

I couldn’t pin point when this production was supposed to be set, from looking at some costume choices I would have said present day (at a guess) but then that opens up a whole can of worms as the situation the characters find themselves in would be easily rectified if the piece was set in present day.

It was evident that the production wasn’t quite ready for public viewing as some performers were nowhere near secure enough with their lines. We got a lot of prompts which, sadly, were in parts which could have potentially been the shows highlights proving a great shame for the production overall. It could be argued that it was ok to have prompts given the outcome / reveal at the end of the play, but that would be a copout excuse to allow laziness as at no point throughout the play should any clue be given of its eventual outcome.

Kath Johnson’s performance as Moppet had some relished moments, in particular the over-the-top actress during rehearsal which worked a treat. This is definitely the finest performance I’ve seen by Adam Garnett, I’ve come to expect a loose cannon performance from him recently but here he didn’t force his act keeping it natural and believable, even when the opportunity presented itself to ham-it-up he kept under control which was wholly noted and presented a well-crafted and agreeable interpretation.

This production introduced Chloe Arrowsmith as a new and promising face, Chloe demonstrated excellent potential in her debut, she’s very natural with her delivery, clear and translated her interpretation with aplomb.

A note to the ladies, when portraying ‘hysterical’, pay attention to / think about vocal variation. No one enjoys hearing whiney, shouty, hysterical crying - it’s an irritating sound. In cases like this, use the voice to your advantage and avoid too much screeching, please.

Direction by Terry Hollinshead was a brave undertaking for a play which is so unsure of its own identity. It’s not an easy one to present with very little to grab onto. The ambiance with SFX was a good road to venture down but even so, there was something which didn’t quite sit right with that either. I think I should just put it down to being a very odd play!

As the performances go, it’s difficult to decipher if they were playing a character or if they were playing an actor/actress playing a character so any comments I give on these performances could be misinterpreted and rather confusing! I do believe that the majority of this cast are indeed competent performers (many of them I’ve seen before so know this to be so), however, this play lacks so much structure and identity, when you dissect it you can’t help but praise this troupe for managing to stage/present anything at all, even if it wasn’t quite there.

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