CORPSE! To 24 November.
Hornchurch.
CORPSE!
by Gerald Moon.
Queen’s Theatre To 24 November 2007.
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat 22, 24 Nov 2.30pm.
Audio-described 24 Nov 2.30pm.
BSL Signed 21 Nov.
Captioned 14 Nov.
Runs 2hr One interval.
TICKETS: 01708 443333.
www.queens-theatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 10 November.
Hokum!
This time last year the Queen’s presented Patrick Hamilton’s Gaslight, something more than a ‘thriller’, dressed up with atmosphere to squeeze tightly into the generic corset. This year they’ve gone more straight-forwardly for Gerald Moon’s 1984 comedy-thriller.
At its centre there’s a neat idea. A failed and feckless actor bribes an ex-army officer to kill the actor’s rich, successful twin so he can take over his bank balance and suave apartment; murder and identity-theft in one. The timing’s precise, set around King Edward VII’s wireless abdication address of 11 December 1936.
Moon’s sinister happenings take place in the shadow of Sleuth, Anthony Shaffer’s 1970 play that buried the corpse of old-style British crime-dramas and introduced the multi-twisting games-playing seen subsequently in the likes of Ira Levin’s Deathtrap or Richard Harris’s The Business of Murder.
Both of which work better than this. Partly it’s the comedy. Does actor Evelyn Farrant entering his dingy flat in drag as a fine lady because that’s oh-so-funny a sight? Or because the dress has enabled him to shoplift a high-class luncheon from a famous London store, both by giving an appearance of respectability and providing capacious pockets? Or is it an indication of his character?
It would take better writing than this to make sit-back-and-laugh comedy mix with edge-of-seat thrills, let alone develop character interest in combination with genre demands for action over characterisation.
Corpse! becomes a farrago of repeated murders - real or apparent: little is as it initially seems - with corpses conveniently falling behind furniture, to allow a hard-working Jonathan Markwood to switch fraternal identity. Should it excite? Or undercut itself with comedy? A supposed highlight, where one character has to manipulate a dead body to fool a drunken, raunchy landlady (Jane Milligan, forthright with her stereotype) is as clumsy as anything on stage this year.
Despite all attempts by Matt Devitt’s Hornchurch cast (a bonus point to Devitt for remembering valve wirelesses took time to warm up), they’d have been better reviving real old corn like The Cat and the Canary rather than a piece only too accurately summed-up by its title.
PC Hawkins: Simon Jessop.
Evelyn/Rupert Farrant: Jonathan Markwood.
Mrs McGee: Jane Milligan.
Major Powell: Stuart Organ.
Director: Matt Devitt.
Designer: Maureen Freedman.
Lighting: Paul Stone.
Fight director: Nicholas Hall.
2007-11-11 12:11:02