 
Something’s Afoot
Grange Players
Grange Playhouse, Walsall
*****
SO
what if Agatha Christie had written a musical? Perhaps not, but Grange
have found an entertaining piece of nonsense which owes every song and
its ever mounting body count to the Queen of Crime in
Something’s Afoot.
If you are looking for
suspects for this 1976 musical whodunit then look no further than
And then there were none,
Christie’s tale of guests lured to a remote
island where they are bumped off in gruesome ways, one by one.
In the musical comedy
version – death of course being the last laugh – six guests are lured to
Lord Dudley Rancour’s
isolated estate, each believing they are to be the only guest but are
happy to find it appears to be a weekend country house party instead,
which sees them breaking into the first big number,
A marvelous weekend.
It becomes
less marvelous when it is announced a terrible electrical storm is
approaching, rising water has cut off the causeway to the mainland and
just to ensure isolation is complete the telephonic speaking apparatuses
are not working.
Lord Rancour
declines to make an appearance to his guests by dint of the fact he has
become the late Lord Rancour between curtain up and first musical
number. A bullet through the brain tends to do that for you.
But that is
for later as the guests are welcomed by the estate staff, butler Clive,
played straight-laced by Ray Lawrence, who we will mention first as,
alas, he will not be with us too long, the maid Lettie played by a
bubbly Elena Serafinas and Flint the caretaker, whose hands try to take
care of anything female, played with flat-capped pragmatism by Gary
Pritchard.
Flint
and Lettie have their own fun knees-up to come when the caretaker
confides in the maid he has a teeny dinghy in
The dinghy song
– and no it is not a euphemism.
As for the guests there is Hope the ingénue
character so loved in 1930’s plays and films, a time when the drama is
set – and full marks for costumes (Rosemary Manjunath) and set
design (Dexter Whitehead and Tony Groves) for a wonderful feel of period
authenticity.
Hope, our sweet
innocent young thing, is played by Phebe Jackson, teaming up with
director Whitehead again after her exceptional performance as Maria in
West Side Story
at Sutton Arts. She really does have a wonderful soprano to go with her
considerable acting talent and looked every inch the society belle of
the ball or in this case, country pile ,
in a sheer, white evening gown and French pleat hairstyle.
Her voice is the
standout one of the show and her solo
You fell out of the sky is beautifully
sung . . . around the chandelier . . . don’t ask.
Robbie Newton as Geoffrey and Phebe Jackson as Hope
Tomas Frater brings
both comedy and a menace to the role of Nigel, nephew of Lord Rancour,
and the black sheep of the family. He is a prime suspect as he appears
to be the sole heir to the Rancour fortune as he happily sings
I know what I’m looking for
in his search to confirm his fortune in the missing will.
Meanwhile it is good to have medical assistance
standing by with a murderer on the loose and Whitehead, who had to step
in at the last minute, adds gravitas to the role of Dr Grayburn, who, if
nothing else, would have been useful for signing death certificates had
he not needed someone to sign his own hardly before his bags were
unpacked.
Suzy Donnely is the rather nervous Lady Manley
Prowe with a Del Boy-like penchant for chucking in, or should that
jetant in, French phrases for effect, effect of what only she knows and
she also knows she carries a terrible secret, is desperate for money and
has a motive to kill the host.
But what’s that among
friends and she manages a very funny duet in
The man with the ginger moustache
with another stock Christie character, the old
Colonial officer, in this case Col Gilweather, played with stiff upper
lip military bluster by Andy Jones, which leaves Jenny Gough as the
amateur sleuth, the Miss Marplesque Miss Tweed who never lets the facts
get in the way of a good deduction.
She manages to accuse
pretty well everyone – wrongly - before finding herself on the rather
unfortunate end of an unexpected clue but not before she tells us in
song that I owe it all
to Agatha Christie in a trio with Hope and
Geoffrey and that popular musical theatre device, three umbrellas – a
sort of dying in the rain number.
Into this rapidly
diminishing mélange of society one would normally expect an unexpected
mysterious stranger, preferable foreign, plucked from the pages o f
the Christie book of stock characters, to pop up, stranded by inclement
weather, but I suppose a student has to do in these austere times, a
student in the shape of Robbie Newton as the tall, dark and dashing
Geoffrey who, after being nominated and then dismissed as the main
suspect, falls hopelessly for Hope and she for him and we get their
duets I don’t know why I trust you
and the finale number New Day.
Sadly it is more of a
finality than a finale as the entire cast have exited life left before
the curtain call as we discover the reason for a
Midsomer Murders
level of death toll which works out at about one every 10 minutes over
the two hours or so – everyone survives the interval.
Tomas Frater as the Rancour bad boy Nigel - Frater
incidentally was also responsible for the lighting design.
Like
And then there were none
the secret is revealed by a gramophone (ask a
grandad if unsure what that is) as we are left to reflect . . . left to
reflect . . .left to reflect . . .
Dexter Whitehead is
making quite a name for himself in amateur circles and has linked up
again with Tom Brookes who was musical director for
West Side Story
to produce an entertaining musical with some lovely comic touches and
some pleasing and quite technical choreography from Emma Allen. A pat on
the back as well to Leo Alexander and sound and Rhinanan Kimberley on
lights who had a lot of cues to contend with.
The musical from James McDonald, David Vos and
Robert Gerlach, is more than 40 years old , opening in 1972 in Atlanta
with short runs on Broadway in 1976 and the West End the following year
and, these days, strangely, it seems more popular in North America than
here which is a pity.
It is great fun with plenty of laughs as we work
our way through the cast with nine creative murders, and, to be fair to
the killer, one unfortunate accident, and although it never manages a
showstopper of a musical number the songs are pleasant, lively and at
times witty providing a pastiche of stock musical theatre numbers.
All in all a thoroughly entertaining evening with
a production that despite its age appears fresh as a daisy and one that
will be unknown and a pleasant and welcome surprise for pretty well
everyone who sees it. To 26-09-15
Roger Clarke
16-09-15
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