"To Become A King Is To Become A Killer" by Sophy Baxter

The King Of Scotland has been brutally murdered and Scotland has been thrown into disarray, but who could have done such a thing, and why?

This is an immersive production which allows the audience to roam through several areas from the murder scene bedroom to an interview room to a park to what looked like a school room with three school girls.

You visit these scenes and listen to the conversations, and if you want to talk to the characters, you can because you are enrolled as detectives or just onlookers to the scenes.

I found myself slowly taking in all of the conversations, although with being in different rooms, you only get part of the conversations to base your results on, but slowly decided who I thought may have done the deed and the ones who maybe did not have the motive, from what I heard, or the access to the King.

I kept coming back to the same conclusion, albeit one that I thought was too obvious, and by the end of the performance was proven to be correct. Like the best of thriller/murder mysteries though it was not until the very end scene that we did find out who killed the King, and why.

Very cleverly written by Sophy Baxter with the actors being in the spotlight all at the same time, always performing but being able to improvise with the audience members as well. A test of their acting skills indeed with some of the sections I witnessed.

So, was it the school girls with a plot they had schemed up online? Was it the cleaner? Was it the mysterious Matthew that the girl on the park bench was trying to calm down on her mobile? We were told by one suspect that it was the Prince, but was that just to throw the police off the scent? Or was it someone else? Did the police get the correct murderer? Will you get the correct result?

This is a fascinating piece of theatre, something that the Nottingham New Theatre are good at, producing fascinating productions. I love theatre that makes the audience member think, and draw their own conclusions from what they have seen, and this certainly tick those boxes.

Get your sleuthing heads on and either watch the action or become involved in the action and see if you can separate the possible red herrings from the real killer, and the cleverly left clues that may, or may not, point you in the direction of what happened. Let me just say though that many of the clues are not visual ones,and being in the right scene at the right time, and using what you hear, could be a bonus.

Go as a group and you can compare notes throughout the 45 minutes that this play lasts.

"To Become A King Is To Become A Killer" is at the Nottingham New Theatre until Tuesday 26 November.