Theatre News

Dark deeds on light nights in Eastbourne this summer

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29 April 2013

If you think that
thrillers are really only for the winter, Eastbourne’s Devonshire
Park Theatre has other ideas. A new Murder in the Park season is
promised for 4 through to 29 June, with a taster thrown in during the week 21 to
25 May. This is Richard Harris‘ Dead Guilty with
Anna Brecon and Jenny Funnell in the cast. As with all the
other productions in the series, this is from the aptly named talking
Scarlet company.

Brian Clemens‘
Murder Weapon is a world première,
something of a feather in the production company’s cap. One of the main
characters is a woman chief constable who finds herself and a
colleague investigating what at first sight appears to be the murder
of a friend’s husband by an ex-convict. Marcus Hutton, Ben Roddy
and Philip Stewart are in the frame. It is on between 4 and 8 June.

Suddenly at Home
is an old Francis Durbridge favourite. A husband wants to be shot
of his wealthy wife and works out what he fondly imagines to be a
foolproof murder with an unshakeable alibi for himself and a bonus in
the apparent implication of his wife’s former lover. But, as the
saying has it, the best laid plan of mice and men… To find out
more, you’ll have to wait until 11 to 15 June when Lara Lemon,
Marcus Hutton and Patric Kearns reveal all.

Tuesday 18 to Saturday
22 June is the slot for Ira Levin‘s Deathtrap. This is the one about a successful
playwright who tries to take possession of a work by a new and
unknown writer. But the carefully-laid plan doesn’t quite work out as
intended. Stephen Beckett, John Hester and Griffin Stevens are
in the cast. Role playing takes on quite a different meaning as the play progresses.

The playwriting theme
continues with the last production of the season. It concerns an
out-of-work actor with perhaps more superficial charm than hard-honed
talent and a crippled former dancer now confined to a wheelchair who
has a theatre obsession and has written a play which she wants read through. They are the main characters in Dead
Certain by Marcus Ward between 25 and 29 June.

All five productions have tour dates scheduled for other theatres in the region between now and the end of July.