As a reviewer of theatre, it would be no surprise to anyone that I find reading difficult. Consequently, when I’m sent marketing material, I don’t read it. If I’m invited to a show, and I’m available, I go.
The tiny amount of hype about this show that managed to seep through my obtuseness had lead me to expect a satire, with amateur theatre as its target. Now, as amateur theatre companies are the epitome of all that is evil in our society – in their unthinking, unearned privilege, in their wanton misuse of power – I was looking forward with relish to their being taken down a good peg or two.
But satire this was not. Instead, it’s an utterly charming sitcom. (Which is probably just as well; on more sober reflection, a professional theatre company taking aim at amateurs smacks of a mean-spiritedness more suited to my role than theirs.)
It’s opening night of the Middling Cove Amateur Drama Society’s production of Midnight Murder at Hamlington Hall, but more than half the cast have come down with the lurgy. Cancel? God forbid! The show must go on!
The script by Jamie Oxenbould and director Mark Kilmurry is hilarious, a glorious mixture of gags and set-ups that facilitate character based humour, both verbal and physical. And the cast know what they’ve been given and they make it sing. (And some of the characters want to actually sing – when they really probably shouldn’t.)
Performances are comic brilliance. I especially enjoyed Sam O’Sullivan as the so-serious auteur, Eloise Snape as the part-time actor who absolutely lives for her brief moments on stage (Providence having in its wisdom kept them brief), and Oxenbould as the old hand whose optimism remains untempered by experience. And Ariadne Sgouros as the stage manager, with her Hey-this-is-reality-calling attitude, is splendid.
To successfully present truly terrible acting you have to be one of two things – truly terrible, or a true actor.
Like all sitcom, there are a couple of conceits an audience must accept to enjoy the ride. The first of these is that actors in a production know the lines of characters other than their own (I would’ve thought they struggled to remember even these.) The second is that amateur companies do new work. (Thank God that professional companies like Ensemble commit to it.)
In addition to sitcom, there’s also parody of the murder mystery genre. This type of parody is, of course, as easy as shooting fish in a barrel – only more common. (But I have to admit, in the case of that particular genre, I think the fish still definitely have it coming.)
And is something serious spun from all this marvellous, magic, comic mayhem?
During the show, the couple next to me whispered that it was difficult to know when the line between art and reality was being crossed. (Or, as the more cynical might rephrase it, when performance started and Life stopped.)
For me, the question the piece very pertinently asks is why do we value art? Is art created ultimately for the audience, or for the artist? It’s not merely amateurs that must ask themselves that.
So satire, after all.
As Someone-or-other-ski once said “Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art”.
Paul Gilchrist
Midnight Murder at Hamlington Hall by Mark Kilmurry and Jamie Oxenbould
at Ensemble until 14 January
Image by Prudence Upton
Theatre Red 