Review: Murder at Midnight at York Theatre Royal

“…broad, messy, and delivered at breakneck speed…a night of good fun…”

Murder at Midnight by Torben Betts, York Theatre Royal

By Sean Sable

Having seen Murder in the Dark last year, I was excited to hear that Torben Betts was turning the darkly comic, thriller-esque mystery into something of a series. I was all in and curious to see how he would iterate on this successful format. But Murder at Midnight arrives more as a spiritual successor to the original—less sibling and more cousin in format and tone. The tight cast, the humour, and the claustrophobia are all there, but it hits differently. Described in the programme as “Feydeau written by Tarantino”, where Murder in the Dark leaned toward psychological thriller with flashes of humour, this new piece reverses the ratio. It is first and foremost a farce that is only decorated with liberal lashings of mystery and violence. A mix that is uneven but often enjoyable, the production is a strange hybrid of murder mystery, sitcom, and gangster send-up that works more often than it doesn’t.

The story is less of a “whodunnit” and more of a “how did we get here.” Beginning with the aftermath of a killing on New Year’s Eve, police comb through the wreckage of Jonny “The Cyclops”’s posh Kent home just before the scene rewinds a few hours to show how it all went wrong. Jonny, a one-eyed drug baron with a penchant for Robbie Williams, is surrounded by an eclectic cast of characters: his glamorous but empty-headed girlfriend, his mother’s jittery carer, a lonely colleague in crime, and a mother who may or may not be a psychic. As the story spirals, secrets surface, loyalties splinter and bodies begin to hit the floor. And in true farce fashion, this all happens through overlapping conversations, near-misses and misunderstood intentions.

Colin Falconer’s triple-tier set is perhaps the production’s greatest strength and certainly something of a marvel. A full cutaway of a modern house stacked with rooms and corridors, it features a tropical-print bedroom above a “man cave” plastered with Robbie Williams memorabilia, which in turn overlooks a sleek living room and kitchenette. The design takes up every square inch of on-stage real estate and feels like an enormous, ready-made playground for chaos. Watching characters weave between levels or narrowly miss one another is great fun, even when the logistics occasionally stretch belief. For my money, seeing such thoughtful set design put to hard work more than justifies the price of a ticket.

Lighting and sound are kept simple, which is a wise move given the sheer amount of… everything… happening on stage. Jason Taylor’s lighting allows the action to remain clear, interrupted only by the occasional burst of saturated colour when the tone turns prophetic or violent. Max Pappenheim’s sound design is built around mostly jobbing details: a gunshot, a barking dog, a song played by Alexa. None of it breaches the expected but, for once, you aren’t going to hear me ask for more soundscape. This was just enough at exactly the right time.

The cast works hard to keep the rhythm steady in what can, at times, tip from chaos to cacophony. Jason Durr plays Jonny with a swaggering Cockney charm that keeps the violence from curdling and Susie Blake makes Shirley’s half-lucid pronouncements giggle-worthy. Peter Moreton’s Trainwreck is a surprisingly heartwarming mix of pathos and psychopathy, and Callum Balmforth’s Russell manages an impressive amount of physical humour whilst half-hidden behind a (probably boiling) latex mask. Katie McGlynn and Max Bowden find the best timing of the night as Lisa and Paul, and their banter, as hopeless as it is flirtatious, always lands.

Yet the production feels like a tale of two plays. The first half races through exposition and overlapping dialogue happening across multiple levels of the house. Characters spend so much time announcing what they are (Paul forever insisting he’s a bad policeman and Lisa asserting she isn’t clever) that it sometimes undercuts the joke. Inspector Clouseau never had to tell us he was a bad policeman because his belief that he’s an excellent one is the crux of the joke. Murder at Midnight lacks this kind of wide-eyed honesty that the best farce relies upon. The pace borders on frantic, and the constant shouting flattens the humour. The second half, though, lands much better. Perhaps because we no longer have to chase the characters from room to room, we can finally enjoy the humour of the situation rather than watching a slightly out-of-time Rube Goldberg machine. Once the story stops explaining itself and takes a breath, it becomes genuinely funny.

Even when it falters, Murder at Midnight is hard to dislike and there is a kind of scruffy honesty in how boldly it commits to the gag. By the time the final blood-stained scene played out, I was laughing more than I expected. For audiences who enjoy their comedy broad, messy, and delivered at breakneck speed, Murder at Midnight offers a night of good fun.

Murder at Midnight plays at York Theatre Royal until Saturday 25 October. Tickets are available here.

Sean Sable is a Yorkshire-based freelance writer and editor specialising in Young Adult and Horror fiction, frequently at the same time. When she isn’t buried under a pile of books and manuscripts, she is looking for her keys and having extensive one-sided conversations, in Swedish, with her deaf cat. You can find her online at: www.seansable.co.uk