Murder for Two now showing at The MAC from Bruiser is a hybrid, a musical comedy thriller, which may be one genre too many. The Premise is a drawing room murder in America – maybe near New York, maybe not from the accents – and the great novelist Arthur Whitney enters his surprise eightieth birthday party to meet an unexpected bullet. Murder, you think or laugh as it’s done in an absurd way. The photo of the late Whitney bars a striking resemblance to the founder of KFC but that particular visual gag fell flat.
However, the two performers who people the stage as the detective ( Rob Gathercole), only not yet on that grade, and his sidekick (Will Arundell, literally, as one of his suspect characters is a Russian sounding ballet dancer doing incredible things with her legs) demonstrate real hi-energy. Then there’s their piano work, now ragtime, now sub-Cole Porter and there were one or two touching love songs to and with Steph Whitney, the crime obsessed niece of old Whitney.
To be honest although the audience loved it, relishing all near gags and lol moments, it seemed quite a long 90 minutes. Maybe an interval could have worked, yet there were some nice details in the plot by Joe Kinosian and Kellen Blair. All the suspects had jolly good motives as they had all featured in Whitney’s expose novels. Ouch, as extra marital affairs, psychological problems and so on were revealed.
There was a feather boa moment or two, Elton John meets maybe Ru Paul, as the fairly merry widow strutted her stuff finally atop the piano. Impressively camp, and enjoyable. The best bits were perhaps the slapstick physical comic moments with some funny encounters between our two clearly fit performers. Will Arundell’s dexterity showed well and the dances and pratfalls came off pretty well. The three members of an original twelve boy choir were cute and worrying under their red caps. We’ve seen Worse, as they defended their youthful right to survive a murder scene was one of the stand-out songs.
There were also some good verbal jokes, one adult gag regarding Lou Murray’s wife’s attendance at Weight Watchers. We wouldn’t know if she was as poorly endowed as her husband, apparently, until she’d reached her target weight.
If you like Agatha Christie on speed, this was definitely for you although th accents wandered at times and some of the characters got a bit lost. Lisa May directed with an eye for the action.
Jane Hardy
