Today's review is The Case of the Frightened Lady
The Case of the Frightened Lady
Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast
IMAGINE AN animated game of Cluedo, in which Col Mustard, Mrs White, Miss Scarlett and company plot their own uncharted series of dastardly crimes while a tight publishing deadline hangs over them like the sword of Damocles. In Bill Scott's melodramatic, helter-skelter, DIY whodunnit, Belfast's Bruiser Theatre Company has found a heaven-sent vehicle for its distinctive brand of precise, choreographed physical theatre.
The year is 1932 and Edgar Wallace, in his time the most prolific author in Britain, is up against it. While juggling the mounting pressures of his day job as a Fleet Street editor, Wallace receives a desperate call from his publisher, demanding that he produce his next novel over the course of a weekend. Never a man to funk a challenge, Wallace (Keith Singleton) rustles up his gormless gardener (Colin Ash), his snooty wife (Angie Waller), his prissy butler, Baxter (Morgan Crowley), and his overreacting new secretary, Jennifer Denning (Julie Maxwell), to combine their powers of drama, invention and imagination with the sole purpose of getting the job done.
Director Lisa May has made a fine job of casting this motley crew and the five actors are excellent as they swap characters and create evermore outrageous flights of theatrical and narrative fancy.
Waller and Maxwell, both blessed with amazingly mobile faces and body language, are a terrific pairing as wife and secretary, whose dramatic confrontations slowly reveal their offstage battle for the attentions of the moustachioed, flamboyant, philandering Wallace. And therein lies much of the cleverness of this dizzying, if somewhat over-elongated, tangle of red herrings and black humour.
In less assured hands, it could all go horribly wrong. But, with some judicious pruning, this has the makings of the best Bruiser show yet.
• Runs until September 23rd, then tours to Mullingar, Wexford, Wicklow, Antrim, Downpatrick, Monaghan, Derry, Ballina, Strabane, Coleraine, Armagh, Lisburn and Enniskillen
JANE COYLE
