"Secondary Cause of Death!"

This play is a sequel to the same author’s “Murdered to Death”, which this group performed in 2019, and this, presumably, explains the play on words in the title.  The first play concerned the murder of a wealthy lady, owner of a country manor, Bagshot House and things have moved on to the extent that, having inherited the property, Colonel Charles Craddock has converted it into a hotel, where Cynthia Maple is staging a murder mystery evening.  A disastrous series of events follows and Inspector Pratt, having battled against the odds and his own incompetence in the original play, is once again called into action, his surname providing a source of many a laugh.

A rather complicated plot involves a number of characters and, with the action set in 1939, we are never quite sure which of them are completely trustworthy or, indeed, “on our side”, as you might say.  After all, as Count Puchlik of Puszczykowo, regularly reminds us, “storm clouds are gathering over Europe” and even Captain Henrietta Woolmer-Cardington, once of Roedean and now of the A.T.S. (Auxiliary Territorial Service in those days, rather than the dealer in car tyres of today) may not be all she seems.  Things do not become any easier when we find that famous actor, Cardew Longfellow, hired to take part in the murder mystery, bears an uncanny resemblance to the Colonel.  There may well be more questions than answers, as the song goes, but there are certainly more corpses (or “copses” as the Inspector puts it) than living souls by the end.    

The cast of nine handled it all well and maintained the humour throughout. Phil Pickering had the difficult task of playing the Colonel and his look-a-like, occasionally even playing one of them pretending to be the other but gave a strong, confident performance, with a suitably differing, rather flamboyant style for the actor. We soon realised why Cardew has to resort to Cynthia’s murder mystery for gainful employment.  Colin Smith was suitably enigmatic as the refugee from Poland who turns out to be a German spy and one of the few survivors of it all. Katie Pickering as Lady Isadora Pollock successfully employed a variety of accents as we discover her to have a somewhat humbler background than her title suggests, but is also required to play a rather loud American woman in Miss Maple’s murder mystery. As the army officer, Jemma Bunting gave a convincing performance with lots of suitable facial expressions as she attempts to keep up with the plot’s surprising turns.  Meanwhile, Lily Tuthill, apparently the cook but really another secret agent, was well played by Sarah Chisem and Rose Velez-Colby made a very credible nurse whose familiarity with the Colonel’s ailments became the subject of some speculation.  The way in which she played a whole scene under wraps following her demise is also worth a mention. Anna Hammond as housekeeper Martha Armstrong is the first victim but, despite an early departure, succeeded in setting an air of mystery about the country manor.  Doreen Driffield made a formidable Cynthia Maple, something of a battle-axe with, understandably, little time for the incompetence of the Inspector, a character who is much troubled not only by a difficulty in remembering names but also by an affliction with malapropisms. That theatrical device is almost 250 years old but it still provides amusement, smiles rather than gales of laughter perhaps nowadays, but that, together with exploding cigars and teapots, is a source of much of the humour in this play. John Pearce made an excellent job of this substantial part, familiar to him after playing the role in the earlier version. 

The entire play, a pastiche (or “pasty” as the Inspector called it) of the Agatha Christie genre, was performed on an excellent set with even a secret door in the library wall and was well directed by Kathryn Leigh with just the right amount of movement on a fairly small stage. I liked the way in which characters had been encouraged to speak their lines down-stage and so often faced the audience as they did so. 

In my view, we are rather starved of drama in this area these days, with professional theatre apparently ignoring plays in favour of one-night stands by comedians of varying quality. Apart from little more than three weeks each year, it is left almost entirely to amateur groups such as this to put on plays and the way they continue to do so is pleasing.  So too is the way that the Players are able to run this venue so successfully, offering varied entertainment in the town in the process.                  

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