Murder She Didn’t Write, Degrees of Error, Something for the Weekend
Leicester Square Theatre, 25th March 2018
Flushed with success from our previous outing to the LST for a bit of class improv, BD, LD and the Tourist slope off to see Degrees of Error and Something for the Weekend and their commended show Murder She Didn’t Write. If this was as anything like as good as Austentatious we were in with a treat (Austentatious at Leicester Square Theatre review ****).
Well, I can report, it is, and we were. You wouldn’t think to look at kindly Agatha Christie that she could have such a devious and sly mind. For how else to explain how she re-wrote the rules on whodunnit plotting. Which delights in exposing human cruelty. Take a look at Sarah Phelps’s riveting adaptations courtesy of the BBC, Ordeal By Innocence on now, Witness For The Prosecution and And Then There Were None, if you want to see how Christie should be done.
Agatha Christie is, by some margin, the most famous product of Torbay. If the Tourist, who is similarly scion-ed, is to catch her up he needs to come up with something sharpish. This blog, with its still pitiful double digit readership, is not it. Her holiday home, Greenway House, is well worth a visit, and happens to be just down the road from the Tourist’s alma mater.
The classic Christie tropes, the grand locations, the secretive characters, the class divisions, the disguises and assumed identities, the clues and red herrings, the inspired investigator, the big reveal, are as amenable to spoofing as they are to cracking drama. So it’s not really a great surprise to see an improvisation troupe alight on Agatha as a source for its entertainment.
That is not in any way to decry the skill which Degrees of Error bring this to the stage. DoE are an improv theatre company based in Bristol and have been taking Murder She Didn’t Write to Edinburgh and on tour since 2013. So they know what they are about. Even so, as with Austentatious, improv comedy theatre on this scale, (we got around 90 minutes of action for our 15 quid each), is a tough gig. So they wisely help themselves in a number of ways. One of the company, (I think Tom Bridges but with no cribsheet I can’t be sure so forgive me if I am mistaken), plays the detective, who guides us through the “plot” with occasional interjections to give his “acting” colleagues time to pause for breath and to suggest scenarios which might add to the gag quotient. He also recruits a member of the audience to be his sidekick, Jerkins, who picks out both victim and murderer. Our cast is “colour-coded” Cluedo fashion to assist in the process. Jerkins also ultimately decides on the location and event for the murder mystery based on audience suggestions vetted by the Inspector.
All this buys a bit of time for cast to prepare and to fit the classic Christie tropes to their characters. Even so, early on, there are a few awkward diversions and cross-talking, but after the first 20 minutes or so the direction is set and the cast can settle into the flow. Then they start making it look easy. After the interval you would barely know it was improvised.
It is very, very funny. Our setting, a wine tasting, and location, a wine-glass factory worked a treat. I don’t know how much they might have squeezed in from previous improvs but nothing ever feels forced or less than spontaneous. Watching the comic ideas coalesce is delightful and seeing the cast grinning when they hit the comedy jackpot makes the whole thing even funnier. That is the shared joy of improv.
I think the cast was Peter Baker, Lizzy Skrzypiec, Tessa Gaukroger, Caitlin Campbell, Rachel Lane and John Lomas, but I can’t be sure as I say. No point singling out anyone in particular, the whole ensemble was fabulous.
If this even slightly piques your interest I strongly encourage you to take the plunge. The London gigs at the LST are at 4pm on a Sunday. What else are you going to be doing then FFS? This is one of those outings where you absolutely can take your mates along without worrying they won’t enjoy it and you will look like a tit, and there is, for a couple of hours at least, no question of FOMO or phone-withdrawal kicking in.
http://www.degreesoferror.com/tour/
At Home He Feels Like A Tourist 