REVIEW: Death By Fatal Murder, The Haymarket (From Basingstoke Gazette)

REVIEW: Death By Fatal Murder, The Haymarket

11:23am Thursday 1st December 2011 in Theatre By Emily Roberts

SOMETIMES I wonder if billing something a comedy encourages people to laugh, whether or not the jokes are funny.

The audience watching Death by Fatal Murder obviously found the one-liners hilarious and were in hysterics throughout. Sadly most of the punch-lines failed to tickle my humour.

Set in the sitting room of a large country manor, the murder mystery comedy centred on an Inspector who was searching for clues to figure out who was the culprit of several murders. He quizzed other characters and eventually came to a conclusion.

The endless jokes were based largely on Inspector Pratt’s (David Callister) inability to master the English language, as he referred to pretty much everything using the wrong word, such as “anal” rather than “nasal”.

It was difficult to figure out at times what exactly he was trying to say.

But his adlibbing in the second half certainly lifted the performance when two on-stage mishaps resulted in part of the set falling apart and one of the actors getting covered in water! Dealing with the situation like a true professional, Callister resorted to improvised humour which had the audience whooping with laughter and erupting in a spontaneous applause as the rest of the cast struggled to keep straight faces.

Even I managed to relax and enjoy the rest of the show, which was slightly more varied in the second half in terms of plot, with the characters taking part in a séance in an attempt to communicate with dead spirits to uncover what happened.

The other characters, including sleazy Italian Enzo Garibaldi (Paul David-Gough), Welsh hippy Blodwyn Morgan (Katy Manning), and upper-class Nancy Allwright (Michelle Hardwick) added to the humour, but their stereotypes were proved to be not quite as they were portrayed, revealing what was actually quite a clever plot.

Although the humour may not have been to my taste, the cast clearly put their all into a well thought out production full of jokes and comedy moments that delighted the majority of the packed theatre.