Murder and Misdemeanours

This was the latest in a series of Murder Mystery evenings from the prolific pen of Ian Clark, who also directed the production and cooked the dinner! To commemorate the bi-centenary of the death of Jane Austen, the action was inspired by her novel  Mansfield Park and set two years later, borrowing her hero and heroine and imitating the style and vocabulary of the time.

The supper tables were laid out on the floor of the Festival Hall’s auditorium, with the hall’s usual tiered seating pushed back out of the way, giving plenty of space, despite the large number of people attending. A small temporary stage set in front of the main stage was more than sufficient to accommodate the action and the simple settings that were used. The actors completed the picture with excellent costumes which, to my untutored eye, looked very much of the right period.

Our host, Kerry Applin, guided us through the three Acts, which were interspersed with the three delicious courses of the meal. The first act introduced the main characters and started to establish possible motives for the eventual murder. The second and third acts introduced the remaining characters and ended up giving everyone a good reason to want the eventual victim, Sir Francis William Sykes, out of the way.

The murder of Sir Francis occurred during the third act and we were left to eat our deserts while we racked our brains for clues in the previous acts that would lead us to the identity of the murderer and his or her motive. Those who hadn’t been paying sufficient attention or had made too many visits to the very reasonably priced bar were going to struggle!  However, six tables did successfully identify the murderer.

The cast inhabited their characters with great enthusiasm, but I felt a little more rehearsal would have helped smooth the progress of the action. During the first and second acts, “guests” from amongst the audience were brought up on stage and given small parts in the action. For me, this broke the fourth wall and didn’t really add anything to the play. The evening veered rather too much towards the Generation Game, distracting us from picking up clues as they struggled to sight-read their scripts.

An inspired addition to the evening was special guest Dr Alison Habens, from the University of Portsmouth, who gave a short, but very interesting and highly individual talk about Jane Austen’s life in Hampshire and how she was a lot more earthy than the image portrayed in her novels. The talk proved a useful source of answers to the quiz sheet that was left on every table, especially for Jane Austen dunces like me who have never read her books!

The evening was great fun and enhanced my knowledge of Jane Austen tremendously! Huge praise must go to Ian and his team in the kitchen for producing such a good quality meal, for so many people as well as offering options to cater for all dietary needs. There were also many nice touches, especially in the programmes and quizzes on the tables – well done to everyone involved for all the hard work that had gone into making the evening such a success.

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