Robert, played by Stuart Wishart,
dragooned into the murder plot by brother David, played by Richard
Taylor
Twist
The Nonentities
The Rose Theatre, Kidderminster
****
The Nonentities
continue their winter season with the first play of 2022 and it’s a
lively comedy thriller,
Twist.
Twist writer Miles
Tredinnick seems to have had more than a few twists in his own career.
One time frontman of the new wave band London, he has also at other
times been a photo journalist, writer of countless TV scripts, and even
some Disney cartoon series. Turning his hand to writing for the stage in
the 1980s, he went on to write
Twist in 1990.
The story centres on the husband of a famous TV
soap actress and a murderous plot to end her run which goes wrong but
then goes right and then goes wrong again, hence the title of the play
Twist. The couple live in their London flat but no one and
nothing is what it seems to be and their straightforward lives and
everyone connect to them, are far from what they appear.
David Woods played by Richard Taylor is a lawyer
yet also an unsuccessful part time crime writer. He lives in the shadow
of his famous and very successful wife and TV star Sarah Seeton, played
by Tori Wakeman.
The couple have a somewhat acerbic relationship,
which is the foundation of much of the early comedy in the play. A plot
between Woods and his actor brother Robert, played by Stuart Wishart, to
kill off wife Sarah, takes on a new possibility when an incident with
the misplaced luggage of a Miss Hannah Van Lee, played by Beth Grainger,
opens new possibilities for the deed to be done.
David and wife Sarah played by Tori
Wakeman
Blackmailed into being an accomplice, Miss Van
Lee assists Woods in the act. However nothing goes to plan and the final
undoing comes in the unlikely form of landlady Mrs Beck played by Sue
Hunt and the intrepid Inspector Root, played by David Wilkes.
Whilst the bulk of the action falls to the very
experienced Richard Taylor in the central role of David Woods, this is a
real ensemble piece where everyone gets an opportunity to shine in their
own performances. The timing is slick and the action is well
thought out and directed by David Wakeman.
There are some great special effects that add to
the excitement and a possessed fireplace that seems to have a key role
in the several of the on stage shoot outs. The fight choreography is
well planned and although the exchanges are a shocking, the brutality is
tamed by some light hearted humour.
There are the flimsiest reasons for revenge and
murder in this play, the public humiliation of aggravated hair loss
being one of them, but putting that aside it’s a well-crafted `hair
raising ‘thriller.
Thankfully attendance at local theatres seems to
now be on the increase and whilst social distancing rules are still in
place in a lesser form to assure the public, the support here is most
welcome. So there’s no reason to not twist again and go see this
absorbing action packed play.
All in all Twist is an enjoyable evening’s
entertainment, beautifully acted and staged that contains more twists,
cover-ups and surprises than a Conservative lockdown Christmas Party. To
29-01-22.
Jeff Grant
24-01-22
The Rose
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