"A Murder Is Announced" by Agatha Christie.

Your Chance Productions.

Duchess Theatre, Long Eaton.

An ad in the personal column of the local newspaper announces that someone will be murdered on Friday 13th October at 6.30pm at Little Paddocks, the home of Letitia Blacklock. The lady of the house is convinced that it must be a joke but the village of Chipping Cleghorn, including Miss Marple, turn up to see what all the fuss is about.

Set in the 1950's where afternoon tea and servants are the norm for a well to do lady, everything takes place in just the one setting, so there's no scene changes, which keeps everything simple for the audience.

Now I am not going to give anything away here because I love the books, films and plays of Agatha Christie, but I've never been any good at working out whodunnit. This play is no different, thanks to the many twists and red herrings in the storyline. And even having seen the play a couple of times over the years, I still couldn't remember whodunnit! Within the first twenty minutes or so we get a body and a murder, so the advert came true. But all is not as it seems as we try and discover who the murderer is, and why the person who was murdered, was murdered.

Jane Marple is played by Philippa Buchanan and I have always secretly thought that Philippa would make a brilliant Miss Marple or Jessica Fletcher type of character, and now that has materialised. Philippa absolutely looks the part and has all of those special foibles and expressions that the more mature female crime fighters have; in short everything that we love about Christie's female supersleuths. 

Samantha Badman is Letitia Blackstock. First off, the costumes for Letitia are spectacular and very of the time period. One thing that I have grown to love about Sam's acting skills is that she can morph into every character she plays, as she does with this one.

Dora Bunner, Miss Blacklock’s childhood friend, is played by Gill Cook. Gill is always fun to watch on stage, and I know that I have said this in other reviews, but she plays the eccentric characters so well and Dora Bunner is a fabulously eccentric role. Gill has a brilliant facial repertoire range which is used to great effect with Bunny.

Paige Kimberley is Julia Simmons, a difficult but beautiful young woman studying pharmacy. There are some lovely sibling moments with her brother where they both try to get the upper hand in certain argumentative situations that all brother/sister relationships experience. But this isn't quite like every other brother/sister relationship as they seem very close, when they're not bickering!

Patrick Simmons, Julia’s brother, is played by James Taylor. I love just how camp Patrick Simmons is and just how marvellously James plays up to the role, and it's that character playing that, maybe, belies what lies beneath their typical sibling relationship. Patrick, we soon discover has a secret of his own, but where does the secret fit in with the murder plot, if at all? I loved James' facial expressions throughout the play, something that Agatha Christie specialised in with many of her characters.

Emily Burgess plays Phillipa Haymes, a young widow working as a gardener, and from the moment she stepped on stage, you got the feeling that something felt as if they didn't fit in with the rest of the characters. Could this be a red herring though to throw us off the trail? Haymes is a very confident character who's not afraid to speak out and comes over quite boyish, but then again that strength od character could come from working in, what was at that time, a male dominated job as a gardener. That again though is in contrast to the wonderful clothes Haymes wears inside the house. A fascinating character, played by a talented actress.

Mitzi, Miss Blacklock’s dramatic and suspicious housekeeper, is played by Chantelle Ruston. Here's another character that I love; Mitzi is over the top in her speeches, rants and tirades she delivers in that Middle European accent. Mitzi manages to get a few phrases wrapped around her neck, like being a "bucket-washer" as opposed to "bottle-washer" and when she was going to walk out advised Letitia that she was "giving her the sack". Mitzi provides quite a bit of the comedy, as well as a some of the twists! And listen out as to how she ends many of her sentences, as after hearing it for a few times almost becomes like a catchphrase noise for her. I can imagine that Chantelle had an absolute ball playing Mitzi.

Martin Weston is Inspector Craddock, the police detective assigned to the case. First off, let's acknowledge the wonderful projection that Martin has, his vocal skills would have been heard right to the back of the theatre

Edmond Swettenham, Clara Swettenham's bolshy and cynical writer son, is played by Oli Watts. Now we all know that by a certain age, no son wants to accompany their mother to an evening soiree, unless there is some reason for him to be there. Is he just being a good son, or is there another motive?

Alison Martin-Jones plays Clara Swettenham who seems to be a tad over interested in the ad in the paper, and the scene just before the closure of the first act seems to indicate that there may be something more of an interest, or maybe I'm reading too much into that entrance and the honey?

Wil Morgan-McLean doubles up as Rudi Shertz, who works at a hotel, but why does he turn up at 6.30 at the house, after all he isn't family nor is he friend? Sergeant Mellors is Inspector Craddock’s assistant.  

Directed by Jessica Morgan-McLean who manages to capture the feel of that 1950's style Agatha Christie murder/mysteries absolutely perfectly. There was just one little thing that niggled me when I first saw it, but then the reason for "it" fell into place for me. Patrick and Julia smoke but the cigarettes were false so there was no smoke with the pretence of smoking a cigarette. It also meant that lighting the cigarette wasn't there. Now, I was thinking, unless there's a reason for the siblings smoking why wasn't those sections where they smoked just left out; but the fact that they did need to smoke to be part of the storyline was made clear as the play went on. Jess brought out every bit of comedy from Christie's script and also kept the secret and suspense and also made sure that all of the red herrings were all made very clear parts of the story. A marvellous job.

The costumes, as you've probably discovered from the earlier part of this review, were yet another high point of this show; an area that Jess and Philippa Buchanan has obviously paid great attention to, and that attention to detail paid off.

The set design is by Philippa Buchanan, Katie Bird and Adam Guest. With the colourful lighting, which made the walls as colourful as the characters, the style was not flashy or posh, but this plain background for the walls gave a nice canvas for the props and furniture on set which indicated a more well to do image.

Talking of props, I loved the fact that the food was real, as was the coffee in the posh coffee dispenser and the other liquid refreshments and the remaining props were many and varied.

Sound and Lighting is by Dave Martin. there were a few odd sounds that maybe should not have been heard, like the sound when a message comes through on your computer or a pop up noise, but that aside the visual red and blue lighting indicating the arrival of the police lit up the whole stage and the sound through the three microphones at the front of the stage gave out a bit of a hum but that was only because I notice things like that, probably going unnoticed by everyone else. With good projection from the stage actors, they were probably not needed anyway. 

I started off by saying how much I love a good murder/mystery, especially by the Queen of Murder/Mysteries. I had seen this play before but I never tire of seeing a good production of Christie's plays, and this production was a marvellous production filled with mystery, comedy, suspense and fun, delivered by a wonderful cast. What a brilliant start to the week. Get your tickets for Tuesday as soon as you can and see if you guess who the killer is, and who is in the firing line, and why!

"A Murder Is Announced" is at the Duchess Theatre in Long Eaton until Tuesday 31 March.