Death at Bracken Manor

Lord Septimus Bracken has invited everyone he thinks could have been involved in a series of break and enters over the last three months at his recently restored manor. This has happened at the same time that his new young wife had come to live there. He also invited his old friend, Ben Rutherby of the Oxfordshire CID, to be in on the caper. Actually he has a crucial role to play when a murder occurs. This sets up a difficult problem to solve and the audience becomes completely involved. The theatre has used this style of production before and it still worked really well. The audience groups were challenged to answer a series of questions on what they had seen and to question the cast to discover if they had solved the murder. As you can imagine, everyone paid close attention to every detail of the intriguing plot as it evolved before them.

John Da Cruz has written a tight story line and then cast well for the most part with the main characters very well defined and depicted.  The atmosphere was spot on and intensified greatly, and well, as the play progressed. There could have been some better use of space and movement at minor times however. Tom Burrell brought strength as the problem solving Detective Inspector. David Scheiwe as Lord Bracken, Susan Harding- Smith as Prunella Price-Ridley, Nathan Symons as Professor Passionfruit and Karen Matthews as Kathryn Champion were consistently good in their roles. Ah, Karen Christl was very attention grabbing  in her excellent portrayal of Fenella Rainbird. This made me wonder where John Da Cruz found  these very different names.

When It came to the audience decision making, my detective work was an abject failure, but this production was anything but that. Congratulations to everyone involved in this  challenging and entertaining production. What will Mr Da Cruz come up with next?

William Davies