Write me a Murder

The Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton is without the usual Charles Vance repetory season this year, but its replacement is a set of three dramas, directed by Ian Dickens. I've booked for all three and report here on the first, a thriller entitled “Write me a Murder”.

It is set in Rodingham Manor, the ancestral home of the impoverished Rodingham family. Brothers Clive, and younger sibling David are there at the request of their dying father. Clive, charming and unprincipled, is planning to sell the old place and use the cash to follow his wealthy American fiancée to the States in a bid to secure a comfortable future. David, after an absence of twenty years, is thinking it is time to move back in. There is little love lost between the brothers and before his Lordship's body is even cold the sparks fly when local boy-made-good, Charles Sturrock comes to make an offer on the house. He does little to hide his contempt of the Rodinghams and is patronising to his wife, a hopeful young writer. With a sale agreed he pushes his young wife into the company of David, a successful author, intimating that he should ghost write a story for her to enter into a national competition.

Act I sets the scene and leads the audience first one way then another ending on an unexpected note and the conclusion of Act II was quite unexpected. I am full of admiration for the author, Frederick Knott, who is probably better known for his play “Dial M for Murder”, in the way he directs the audience into thinking they know what is going to happen, then throwing a googlie.

Leslie Grantham was particularly good as the local businessman with a nasty, bullying streak.

P.S. I notice that Horsham DC and the Capitol are included in the acknowledgments. This was my old stomping ground, back in the days when the Capitol Theatre was a cinema and before it became a Bingo Hall; I hear from contacts still living in Horsham that it is a successful Arts Centre with lots going on.

Tonight we're off to see a comedy - "The Tart and the Vicar's Wife" and next week it is another thriller - "Killing Time".