My sister very kindly renewed my Malvern Theatres membership for my birthday last month, so yesterday I took myself off to the matinee of this week’s production, Strictly Murder. It’s a thriller, set in rural France in the immediate run- up to the outbreak of WWII. Peter and Suzy are a British couple, living in poverty deep in the countryside. They appear to be happy, the only problem being that he seems to be commitment-phobic, and won’t marry her. But then some people turn up from Peter’s past, and it becomes clear that he’s not who he said he was, and that he has a secret and probably very violent past.
Of course, as it’s a thriller, you have to look out for plot twists and turns, and not take anything on face value. The playwright plays with the audience’s sympathies – it’s not clear at first whom we should believe, or who is the baddie. The author was also very smart at saving money on hiring actors – two of the main characters were identical twins, and since they never appeared on stage together, the producer could easily get away with just one actor playing both parts!
I thoroughly enjoyed the performance. It was just a shame though that the audience was very small – the theatre must have been well under 1/4 full, and I had no trouble at all getting a very good standby seat just a few hours before curtain up. I suppose it was so nice outside that people didn’t want to spend the afternoon cooped up indoors. And the cast didn’t have any “big names” to draw in the casual punter. But I thought it was a good start to what I intend to be another year making good use of my membership card.
