Theft

It’s hard to say whether Eric Chappell’s play Theft is a comedy or comedy thriller. This lightweight parody of J B Priestley’s An Inspector Calls falls somewhere in the middle of the two genres.

A wealthy businessman and his wife and their guests, return from an evening out to discover that their house has been broken into and that one of the burglars is still in the property. The plot revolves around the thief’s attempts to persuade his captors to release him. He discloses, in separate conversations with each of them in turn, that he’s been through their personal effects and discovered various ‘secrets’, which they’d no doubt prefer remain hidden.

The storyline soon becomes predictably repetitive laying bare a creaky plot that has more holes in it than a sieve. The author then parachutes into the mix a stock comedic ‘loveable rogue’ whose clunky philosophical musings do nothing to advance the plot, leaving the rest of the characters little to do but stand around filling in the gaps. As a straightforward thriller, the play could, and perhaps would have been more entertaining.

I would have liked to have seen more variety and pace from director Vicki Green’s competent cast. Faster delivery of lines would have given us more energetic performances. On discovering the burglary there was no real sense of outrage or urgency from the victims. The restrictive layout of a rather ordinary sitting room offered only limited opportunity to the cast to move around naturally. Given the wealth of the house’s owners, a modern and sharper minimalist look would have been more convincing and provided more space for the action. The strange position of the overlarge sofa, it was set with its back to the fireplace, didn’t help. A window seat set square on to the audience had curtains which partially masked anyone required to sit there. When the play opened the room looked only superficially disturbed; leaving the desk drawers and cupboard doors open would have added to the effect of the burglary (thieves are normally too preoccupied to close drawers once opened). Restraining the burglar by tying him to a chair lacked realism mainly due to the fact his hands were left free; if he’d wanted to escape all he had to do was lift the rope over his head and take off. A general lack of attention to detail did nothing to conceal several other flaws and anomalies in the script.

Apart from John’s tuxedo, which looked incongruous given that Trevor was wearing a  lounge suit, the costumes were spot on. The performances were generally solid throughout. Paul Lockwood as Trevor was suitably subservient to his successful friend. Chris Shinn as the wealthy self-made man demonstrated the unpleasant and overbearing side of John Miles while Suzanne Holland, as his wife Barbara, in the best performance of the evening, ably displayed a range of emotions lurching from a controlled (but not overdone) drunk, to a confident no-nonsense self-assured woman as the story progressed. Wendy Croft as Jenny, Trevor’s wife, gave us flashes of frustration and anger while Terry Betterman as the  intruder, Spriggs, after an initial over-the-top ‘stage’ detective routine, settled into his more relaxed and believable role as the old lag. Regrettably he tended to play most of his lines out front rather than making direct eye contact with the other characters, something which would have drawn them more into the story.

Waterbeach have produced many good productions over the years, but on this occasion they were sadly let down by an unconvincing script which at best was mildly amusing and at worse less than mediocre.

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