SCREAMING BLUE MURDER. To 24 June.

Tour

SCREAMING BLUE MURDER
by John Godber

Hull Truck Theatre Company Tour to 26 June 2004
Runs 1hr 40min One interval
Review Hazel Brown 26 February 2003 at Lighthouse, Poole

Not scary, not funny, just odd.Billed as a comedy thriller, this play failed either to thrill or amuse and left the impression that John Godber had aimed at a Joe Orton style of gruesome humour, but lost the plot somewhere along the way.

The play opens with a nice twist a young woman in a dressing gown toweling her hair dry and dressing in a typically anonymous hotel bedroom, only for the door to open and Nick, a guest, to arrive. It turns out the girl is actually the maid. Amy Thompson's mid-European accent never falters despite great agitation as she dashes in and out, obviously looking for something left behind in her hurry.

Rob Angell is one half of the adulterous couple in the hotel for a murder mystery weekend. When his lover Gill arrives, the whole enterprise starts to go pear shaped from mysterious blood stains on the towels, a pubic hair in the bed, £400 wrapped in underwear to accidental cuts, ghostly voices plus sinister and camp hotel managers (both played with great style by Dicken Ashworth).

It is not going to be a good weekend, as flagged up by the grisly room service dinner; the biggest mystery is why the characters don't just cover it up or wheel it out of the room. The hotel is apparently a former mental asylum and sexual exploitation of the current staff is hinted at to add further strange strands to the plot. Gill's husband arrives in the hotel, forcing the couple to stay in their room and this proximity leads to a predictable result. This is, after all, a murder weekend.

All four actors are believable in their roles, but you don't care about the fate of any of their characters and, though black, Screaming Blue Murder is neither scary nor particularly funny.

Maria: Amy Thompson
Nick: Rob Angell
Gill: Fiona Wass
Ronnie: Dicken Ashworth
Katie Killick: May Thomas
Colin: Ken Dishworth
Sir Thomas Killick: Dick Worth

Director: John Godber
Designer Pip Leckenby

2004-03-12 08:12:27