Incognito

Incognito is a farcical – well, absurd - spoof on those Agatha Christie mysteries in which members of an ill-matched but well-heeled group are picked off one by one.  Set in an exclusive health spa in the Swiss Alps, the characters are soon snowed in, trapped with the murderer - who can only be one of them. And the police cannot get there till morning. 

The mystery genre and this show depend, firstly on the ‘mystery’ and consequent jeopardy, and secondly on the clashes, collisions and reveals of the characters.  Here the resort’s staff are host manager Gillian (Emily Carr) and her twin, health supervisor Dr (or is it ‘Professor’?) Zap (also Emily Carr), and aerobics instructor Marianne (Kimberly Duband).  The guests are the abrasive and ruthless Australian newspaper tycoon (Chris Tomkins); a priapic, disgraced actor (Mark Woodward), once a star; a fundamentalist Christian woman (Kimberly Duband again) in a wheelchair; a complete idiot, John (Chris Saxton), masquerading as a clergyman in pursuit of the wife who has left him; and said wife, Vera (Kathryn Tohill), a glamorous and sharp-tongued woman, who dominates the stage and is the heroine and force majeure, the ‘detective’ of the piece.  

Of the cast, Kimberly Duband shines by simply playing it straight – not that that really fits with the rest.  Chris Tomkins plays his tycoon so naturalistically, with an Australian accent, that he is a rather grating contrast to the show’s parody ‘style.’ Chris Saxton, however, maintains his profoundly stupid John with impressive control, and Kathryn Tohill’s Vera seems – to me, anyway – the only one to get the tone just right with a mix of dry sarcasm and head girl bossiness. 

Agatha Christie’s forte is not comedy, but it is James Hazelden’s and Nicholas Rasche’s, principally (I’m guessing) their spoofs in the Mystery Radio Theatre shows.  Here comedy wins out over all else – at the expense of plausibility and ‘mystery’.  The writing, characters and varied acting styles are all within the ‘anything-for-a-laugh’ school. That’s fine if the pace is unrelenting and the gags are mostly of equal calibre. While there are some brilliant one-liners, ripostes and quips here, ‘funny’ is too often just silly and the strain to be ‘funny’ shows. 

A great deal of imagination is required. As a luxury Swiss resort, La Mama Courthouse’s bare stage has only a small table with cloth as furnishings.  Allan Hirons’ lighting scarcely changes – but then why should it?  Direction by Mr Hazelden is, not to be too mean about it, flatfooted with the cast much of the time lined up like crows on a fence, facing the audience.  But, watching the show, I thought, how else could this text be produced?  That’s not to say that the audience was not entertained: they seemed to get it, relaxed and went with it in an easy-going kind of way. Incognito is what it is, carried along by the evident enthusiasm and commitment of the cast. 

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Darren Gill