Murdered to Death

Reviewed by Maggi and Jerry

Having seen last year’s play by the Great Bedwyn Pantomime Society and been impressed by the standard of acting we were eagerly awaiting this year’s play.

It was another Peter Gordon play based on a spoof of AgathaChristie's Miss Marple. You know the form. Set in a country house, a murder occurs and all the characters are suspects for the Inspector, Miss Maple (spoof of Miss Marple) and you the audience to work out who done it!

This year they were able to utilize the stage. This set the stage much better with the drawing room of the country house authentically created by Colin Gardner and Steph Hudson, including a fire with logs! It also made entrances and exits much more seamless.

Each scene was delightfully opened by the maid Tweeney played by Helen Lane courtseying and showing some scene setting cards e.g. morning or two hours later and then skipping off the stage. This was a nice touch and the audience giggled each time.

The play opens in the drawing room with the mistress Mildred, played by Jane Heather and her neice Dorothy played by Brenda Mason eagerly anticipating the arrival of some guests for the weekend. This is the first appearance of Bunting the butler, very funnily played by Jonty Hitchman. He’s a butler with attitude, talks back to his mistress, drinks and resents having to do any butler duties.

The guests start to arrive; Colonel and Margaret Craddock, played by Philip Gray and Karen Gardner, glamour girl Elizabeth Hartley Trumpington played by Hannah Phillips and artist Pierre Marceau played by Julie van Haperen, sporting a great French accent.

Miss Maple, played with great comic timing by Sue Kershaw, arrives. She is framed as the village busy body wanting to see who all the guests are as well as benefit from a free dinner.

As the play unfolds you see that all is not as it first appears. Colonel Craddock had an affair with Mildred many years ago. Dorothy confronts Pierre Marceau for selling fake pictures to Mildred some years back in Paris and attempts to blackmail or expose him to Mildred. Elizabeth turns out not to be an upper class toff but an Essex girl in cahoots with Pierre.

Then murder occurs with Mildred being murdered at the end of the first act.

Cue the entrance of Bruce Mason, who once again puts in the comic performance of the night as Inspector Pratt with his able sidekick Constable Thompkins played by David Hayes. Picture a British bungling Inspector Clouseautype with his trusty PC who is always bailing him out. The suspects get interviewed. Brenda, the Colonel and Bunting all have motive based on Mildred will. Then Dorothy is murdered and due to the art connection Pierre is arrested by the clueless Pratt. However you have a nagging suspicion that the wrong person has been arrested.

Luckily Miss Maple is not so clueless and in the final scene the correct culprits are unveiled as Margaret Craddock, whose husband inherits after Dorothy is murdered, assisted by Bunting the butler who turns out to have had an affair with Margaret years before in India. They planned on killing the Colonel and pocketing the lot. A nice touch is Bunting ending up more James Bond than bumbling at the end!

I guessed Bunting, my husband guessed Margaret so we were feeling quite smug to have solved it.

A friend took her children. Charlotte (9) though it was the best play/show she had seen in her life (doesn't say a lot for the West End musical she went to recently) and Myles said it was great but it would have been better if everybody had died!  That's 7 year old boys for you.

All in all the play was a brilliant family outing (at a fraction of the cost of a West end Show). Directing and producing was once again ably done by Henry Hudson and Lesley Hitchman.

The play was perfectly cast with each character very believable in their role, so much so that you still think of them in their roles in real life. The acting was very professional despite a few hiccups such as falling off moustaches on the first night and people falling off the stage on the last night! I don’t know how they kept straight faces with the audience in tears with laughter.

We’re lucky to have such talented individuals in the village and we can’t wait till next year’s play.