By Gary Murray
Spoof crime thrillers are all the rage at the moment.
Murdered to Death, one of a trilogy, came to Eastbourne last night: it’s a parody of the Agatha Christie country house genre.
A variety of characters assemble in the drawing room. It’s 1936 and the hostess Mildred, along with her prim niece Dorothy, has invited friends.
They are Colonel Charles Craddock and his wife Margaret, society girl Elizabeth Hartley-Trumpington, French art dealer Pierre Marceau (with an ‘euwt-rajuss’ [atrocious] French accent), and a ‘guest’ who invites herself, eccentric neighbour Joan Maple.
When we join her, Mildred appears to be having some staffing issues, namely with her booze-soaked but pedantic butler Bunting (a lugubrious David Gilbrook).
As is the way of these things, there is a murder…
You might have expected the local nick’s finest to be sent to investigate. What we get is the aptly named Inspector Pratt, played by Nicholas Briggs as a mixture of bumbling Inspector Clouseau and officious Dad’s Army’s Captain Mainwaring, and his hapless sidekick Constable Thompkins.
And there may be more than one murder…
This is all played at a cracking pace with some quick-fire funny dialogue. All the usual tropes are skewered nicely on an exquisite country house set.
But all is not what it seems.
Without giving anything away, the case is solved not by the police (of course), but by Miss Maple, whose name may remind you of another character from detective stories…
It’s an ideal production for the Devonshire Park, and we have more to look forward to in a similar vein this autumn with Dial M For Mayhem and Cluedo 2 coming next month.
:: Murdered to Death, which runs until Saturday, can be booked here. The reviewer’s ticket was provided by Eastbourne Theatres.
