THE STAGE of the Belgrade is turned into a bloodied crime scene for Torben Betts’s latest murder thriller but, while the police set about gathering evidence, the serious crimes and their perpetrators are blatantly on display in a true atrocity of a production.
This show’s faults are so many and so inexcusable that it’s hard to know where to begin.
Perhaps the most obvious failing is that so much of the dialogue simply can’t be heard. It is either inaudible and distant or rendered impossible to understand through characterisation that chooses shortcut stereotyping over any form of diction.
Even from the stalls the effort being put in is visible but visible only. And in the case of the women particularly, a screeching, one-note delivery is just plain awful. Few characters manage to rise above that level.
The audibility issue isn’t helped by a set which, though it deserves mention for its looks, ends up pushing the cast further back and further up.
The acting in general is pedestrian at best. On too many occasions what momentum there may be is just destroyed by slow delivery and unwelcome pauses, some of which were caused by several characters not being entirely confident with their lines. No names, to spare blushes, but when the principal thrust of the action rests on you, you should be better than that.
The whole show is lamentably static in its staging and very uninspiring in its direction. Long sections simply don’t move at all with characters standing in a line or left completely forgotten on the sofa. When the killings eventually arrive we get embarrassingly lame fights and chases round the furniture which would look more at home in pantomime.
When things do start to move and snippets can actually be heard it becomes apparent that this isn’t actually a very good script. It’s not funny enough to be a comedy and the plot is unveiled at such a funereal pace that it can’t really claim to be a thriller either.
Packing the cast with famous faces from the small screen might guarantee more applause than is strictly deserved, but no soap star can really save this nonsense. Like the bulk of the cast by the time the end eventually arrives – this is absolutely dead.
Matthew Salisbury
