INSPECTOR MORSE: HOUSE OF GHOSTS | UK TOUR @ FESTIVAL THEATRE, EDINBURGH
★★
“Bemusing whodunnit with convoluted storytelling …”
There’s a lot of acting going on in House of Ghosts, Alma Cullen’s convoluted murder mystery that gives Colin Dexter’s much loved creations, Chief Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis, their first stage outings.
Billed as a ‘chilling mystery’, it opens with a play within a play as a scene from Hamlet provides the set up for the investigation about to unfold. It’s a scene that appears to set the bar deliberately low – ‘coarse acting’ of the finest kind. Enter a neurotic Hamlet, a doomed Ophelia, a tipsy Gertrude and a Geordie Laertes, all being pushed to their creative limits by tyrannical director and voracious ladies man, Lawrence.
Conveniently, as up and coming star Rebecca (Ophelia) dies on stage mid-performance, Morse just happens to be in the audience, quickly making his way from his seat to the stage to contain the crime scene, a crime scene peopled by more than one ghost from his past.
As memories of a student production of Hamlet he appeared in some 25 years earlier come flooding back, Morse finds himself unexpectedly reunited with members of that college company, and it’s not long before his investigation throws up a sinister connection between events that happened a quarter of a century earlier and the case he and Lewis are now investigating.
Stepping into the role of Morse, an almost impossible task so enduring is the memory of John Thaw in the part, Tom Chambers makes a world-weary, yet youthful Chief Inspector. Set in his bachelor ways, this socially awkward Morse is a man that holds a grudge. It’s a performance that at times verges on parody, but despite gurning delivery and bizarre physical posturing, or perhaps because of them, remains eminently watchable.
Tachia Newell, as Lewis, plays into Chambers’ Morse with complete conviction. It’s a naturalistic, generous turn that captures the character perfectly and makes the unlikely partnership work.
Elsewhere, Charlotte Randle has great fun as Verity, the wonderfully melodramatic, gin-soaked grand dame of the company, while Jason Done matches her energy as ranting, supercilious director, Lawrence.
The main problem with this production comes from its distracting staging. Colin Richmond’s functional stage design is uninspiring and unforgivably relies on the archaic practice of ‘push-and-pull’ to travel from scene to scene, which results in actors spending too much of their time carrying furniture on and off stage. It’s a device that quickly becomes irksome and detracts from the flow of the storytelling.
Likewise, Anthony Banks’ direction is uneven. As endless exposition is clumsily communicated, often without any sense of urgency, the thoughtful becomes plodding. Much of this is down to Cullen’s script which is wordy in the extreme, often dull, and at times fails to clearly delineate between the events of 1962 and 1987. There are one or two humorous nods to the pre-mobile/computer period of the piece but all too often the funniest moments are unintentionally.
A bemusing whodunnit then, that forgets the golden rule show don’t tell and never quite captures the stylish Oxford academia and melancholic heart of Colin Dexter’s best-selling novels.
Full tour and ticket details HERE
Went to see this last night and left at the interval. It was all too ‘amateur dramatics’ for me. Actors were wooden, stage set up gloomy and boring and actors constantly moving furniture really annoying. I loved John Thaw as Morse but this didn’t come close to the character.
I agree. It didn’t transfer to stage that well.