Colin Yong as Penworthy, Katy Ball as Monica,
Christian Davies as Lucien, Sandy Tudor as Dora, Faye Bingham as Emily,
Jessica Bishop as Freda, Andy Bingham as Perry and, hidden at the back,
Beth Dalton as Anne
A Tomb With a View
The Nonentities
The Rose Theatre, Kidderminster
****
When it comes to a murder mystery, or in
this case, a murders mystery, what we have here is not so much Agatha
Christie, more what appear to be a distant and rather, should we say,
eccentric scion of the Addams family with their own version of And
Then There Were None with a bit of Arsenic and Old Lace
thrown in for good measure.
We open with the Tomb family gathering for the
reading of their late father, Septimus Tomb’s will, Septimus being dead
. . . probably, or even undead, possibly, in a family where normal took
flight generations ago.
Doing the reading is long time family solicitor
Hamilton Penworthy given an avuncular air by Colin Young – avuncular
only if your uncle was a splendidly smarmy, snake oil salesman that is.
His news is not the best for the family fortunes
as the Tomb estate, worth some £7million, has an extra beneficiary,
Septimus’s favourite author Ermyntrude Ash, which goes down like a case
of bubonic plague with the assembled oddballs.
Assembled apart from Oliver that is, who we hear
but never see as he spends his time in a cage in the cellar and gets
agitated as new moons approach. Everyone needs a hobby, philately,
astronomy, whatever, or in Oliver’s case, being a werewolf.
Head of the family is the eldest son Lucien,
played in true nutty professor style by Christian Davies, although
perhaps Lucien being a little less loony and within hailing distance of
normal might have had more impact.
And when it comes to normal we had dear old Dora,
or perhaps Dotty Dora in the skilled hands of Sandy Tudor. Dora is a
keen gardener and makes delightful flower based wines renowned for their
splendid taste and fatal ingredients, a truly organic murderess with
true recycling spirit using her, let’s call them focus groups, as
compost.
The family it seems have visitors but are not
well endowed with leavers, but the gardens are dead good, apparently.
Then there is Faye Bingham as Emily, who seems to
be in a permanent state of sarcastic anger and hunger, eating anything
available, quantities increasing scene by scene. Her dress is sort of
Hitler Youth casual.
Marcus, has his ears lent by George Gallagher, so
to speak. Gallagher underplays him quite beautifully. Marcus thinks he
is Julius Caesar and dresses in a toga – to say he is probably the most
normal one gives you an idea of what we are up against here.
Legal(ish) eagle
Penworthy, loopy Lucien and Dotty Dora on inheritance
duty
Meanwhile Monica is fairly normal, at least as
far this family goes, if you accept that she is a nymphomaniac and no
man is safe. Katy Ball fondles her way through the role with seductive
delight, with the proviso that nothing gets in her way.
It’s a performance that leaves Peregrine Potter
hanging on to his manhood, and the sheet covering it, for grim death, a
necessary predicament after he drove into the river, don’t ask, on his
return to London.
Perry, played with innocence, or maybe fear, by
Andy Bingham, is the secretary of Freda Mountjoy, who is also, we are
told, the famous romantic novelist Miss Ash, if anybody is who or what
they seem in this madhouse although we do know she is really Jessica
Bishop. Why she is the late Tomb’s favourite writer is . . . well that
would be telling, and she won't be around to find out in any case .
. . just saying.
Hovering around are the staff with Beth Dalton as
nurse Anne Franklin, looking after Marcus, and she seems both
professional and very boring as she is seemingly normal, and then there
is faithful housekeeper Agatha in her blood-stained apron, chopper in
hand and far from normal in the surly shape of Hannah Tolley. She knows
where all the bodies are buried, literally in this case and still serves
the dead . . . or is he . . . Mr Tombs with the ability to
change from dark threats, a menacing, scary portend of death and
destruction to announcing lunch or dinner with a cheery smile in the
same sentence.
So, with a dodgy solicitor, £7m and a gothic pile
at stake, an interloping author beneficiary, sibling feuds enveloping a
family with a homicidal tendancies that would keep a team of
psychiatrists at work for generations, what could possibly go wrong?
As a clue this is a play without stage hands
between scenes, just a pair of undertakers come on in the gloom and take
away their new customers. The death toll rivals Hamlet - it even makes
Midsomer look a safe place to live.
Hannah Tolley's Agatha keeps a watchful, or is it evil, eye
on Andy Bingham's petrified Peregrine as Katy Ball's Monica makes his .
. . acquaintance
We start out with 10 in the Library at Monument
House and end up with . . . its so easy to lose count but, apart from
those who fall by the wayside, there is something for everyone in there,
the theatrical equivalent of BOGOF.
You have a comedy, polished and deepest black at
times with some extremely droll, throw away, deadpan lines, real laugh
out loud stuff, and then there is the serious, sort of, side with
a murder mystery, the whodunit part of Norman Robbin’s 1977 clever play.
The problem here for thriller fans who like to
second guess the plot is that pretty well all the characters are
homicidal maniacs so you can put anyone you fancy on your list . . .
until they are dead of course, which most of them are eventually.
The result is a performance full of fun, intrigue
and enough plot twists and turns to make the average corkscrew look like
a skewer. There are laughs a plenty, a few shocks and genuine make you
jump moments, a thriller to follow and a mystery to solve.
And it is all on a glorious gloomy, gothic set
with its lop-sided portrait of a stern Septimus, secret entrances and
empty looking book shelves designed by Jen Eglinton who also weighed in
operating the lighting in David Wakeman’s convincing lighting and sound
design.
If there was a criticism, and this is no
reflection on an excellent cast who brought the production to life, or
death in most cases, but of the script which provides a challenge to the
cast at times to keep up a decent pace, which, to their credit, they did
extremely well. A little judicious pruning of the dialogue here and
there would help the flow.
Not that it spoilt the enjoyment at all, more a
minor technical observation. The audience were treated to a glorious
evening of witty, at times deliciously dark comedy and intriguing,
well-structured mystery cleverly hidden beneath the shoals of red
herrings landed by the bizarre Tomb clan.
If they can keep enough of the family from
killing each other – and anyone else . . . don’t drink the wine
remember, the will will still be being revealed to 30-11-24.
Roger Clarke
26-11-24
The Nonentities
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