Murder Village

This improvised comedy group provides a delightfully quaint interactive experience. Various stock characters populate Murder Village: Theophania Dalrymple (Sophie Kneebone), Henry Stuffins (Jason Geary), Dr Nelson Hawthorne (Lliam Amor), Sally Forth (Louisa Fitzhardinge) are among the villagers who are subject to imminent death. Audience members secretly vote for the victim, murder weapon and means of death. The company then improvises the scenario and elderly sleuth, Miss Jemma Marmalade (Amberly Cull), works alongside Detective Inspector Owen Gullet (David Massingham) to reveal the details of the murder.

This sets up a very amusing, sometimes confusing challenge for both the performers and the audience and watching them improvise their way out of the puzzle is part of the magic of the show. The musical accompaniment provided by Terry Mudwater Jr (Jaron Why) helps to set the mood, although at times the volume of the music overshadows the naturalistic and investigative nature of the dialogue.

This is definitely a whodunnit with a difference and much of the humour is generated from watching the actors interact with each other, surreptitiously sending clues via their performance. The characters are well delineated and the colourful costumes have great detail. The tongue-in-cheek performances are charmingly ironic and self-reflexive. All the tropes of the Agatha Christie genre are fully exploited to construct an evening where revelling in death and murder is turned into wholesome fun.

Patricia Di Risio