A hilarious love letter to the classic crime thriller
This year’s classic thriller season at Nottingham’s Theatre Royal showcases work which, in varying degrees, deconstructs the crime/thriller genre.
Next week, prepare to be bamboozled and delighted by Ira Levin’s Deathtrap, with its a Rubiik’s cube of a plot and the best use of a play-within-a-play since Hamlet; then marvel, the week after, at just how many twists, turns and sleights of hand can be incorporated into into a three-hander in Richard Harris’s The Business of Murder.
The season kicks off this week with a more slapstick approach, however, as the bumbling Inspector Pratt (Mark Pearce) - a character who single-handedly makes the case for nominative determinism - rocks up at an English country house to investigate the disappearance of one of his constables. Although he does labour for a while under the misapprehension that “missing Constable” equates to an art theft. Welcome to the pun-addled world of Peter Gordon’s Death by Fatal Murder.
Set in 1940, the play takes every trope from the Golden Age of Crime that you can think of (as well as enough double entrendes to keep a Carry On fan happy) and applies the laughing gas liberally.
Pratt is an exercise in physical comedy - he makes Inspector Clouseau look restrained and Frank Drebbin competent - and Pearce revels in the role. An assortment of immediately recognisable types litter the cast: vampish lady of the manor Nancy Allwright (Sarah Wynne Kordas), overbearing land girl Ginny (Juliette Strobel), spry busybody Miss Maple (Karen Henson), stiff-upper-lipped Squadron Leader Allwright (Andrew Ryan), lascivious Italian Enzo Garibaldi (Jeremy Lloyd Thomas), flamboyant medium Blodwyn (Susan Earnshaw), and Pratt’s much put-upon sidekick Constable Thomkins (Pavan Maru).
The timbre of the comedy ranges from obvious pratfalls to beautifully judged moments of whip-smart satire, by way of caricature, saucy seaside humour, knowing winks to the gallery and oodles of wordplay, most hilariously Pratt’s tendency to Spoonerisms.
The gags come thick and fast, some of them giddily inspired, some at a level one step down from playground humour, and some that you can see coming like an ocean liner on a duck pond. Astoundingly, Gordon’s script not only holds all of these tonally different aspects in balance, but weaves a cleverly structured plot behind all the fun and tomfoolery.
And Death by Fatal Murder certainly is fun. The cast give it their all, Maru in particular deserving a “man of the match” award for a performance which is all the funnier for being understated.
John Goodrum’s direction is attentive to pace and timing, while Conal Walsh’s production design locates the action in a comfortingly recognisable setting, bustling with all the required hints of Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh et al.
It’s the familiarity that sells it, the cozy drawing room atmosphere a perfect background to a catalogue of hilarious set pieces culminating in a frenetic final scene that buzzes with dark secrets, hidden identities, furtive trysts and murky motives.
Death by Fatal Murder is both a takedown of and a love letter to the crime genre, and it makes for a supremely entertaining evening at the theatre.
The Colin McIntyre Classic Thriller Season 2025: Death by Fatal Murder plays until Saturday 16 August 2025.
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