Dead Guilty (tour)

Playwright Richard Harris set out to write “a thriller for women” with Dead Guilty‘s original 1994 incarnation, Murder Once Done. More of a chiller than a thriller perhaps, in spite of the scream which starts Ian Dickens‘ new production.

We’re in one of those trendy London houses, once a working-class dwelling and now the preferred abode for trendy media types. In this instant the owner is a freelance graphic designer Julia, who’s in the first stages of recovering mobility after a car crash in which her client (who was also her lover) has died.

Well-off designers can call upon paid-for help and other services. Julia has a home-help, Gary, and counsellor, Anne, to assist. It’s a moot point whether she also needs the dead man’s widow, Margaret, in her life. But she accepts her – and life rolls over to its flip side.

Which is death, of course.

This is a wordy play, developed in many short scenes which suggest that it might work better in television or on film rather than as a staged production. That may be why so much of the dialogue is delivered very quietly. Far too quietly at times. Audiences tend to become impatient if they have to strain to hear what’s being said, particularly if what’s being missed is important to the plot.

The chief offender in this regard is Lorraine Chase as Margaret, though she can certainly let rip on some phrases and has a nice wardrobe of mix’n’match outfits. Clare McGlinn has a struggle to make Julia sufficiently sympathetic for us to care about her physical and emotional agonies until it’s far too late to really matter.

Abigail Fisher makes Anne a credible listening ear with just the right touch of harassed professionalism. And there’s a full-blown study of an inarticulate youngster by Gary Turner as odd-job Gary, too concerned for his employer for his own good and not quite bright enough for hers.

The real star of the show is David North‘s nicely detailed set. It gives us a credible blend of living and working space, though I did wonder if a 21st-century graphic designer wouldn’t have had a state-of-the-art Apple Macintosh computer rather than just a drawing-board.

But then those red herrings about scalpels would have had to rest in their tin…

– Anne Morley-Priestman (reviewed at the Gordon Craig Theatre, Stevenage)