Edinburgh Fringe theatre review

Not so much a whodunit as a who-cares-whodunit, this clunky Agatha Christie spoof is overburdened with thin characters and undertroubled by plot, sense or motive. It’s very hard to invest in any of it.

Set in a plush country house hotel, it’s a parody of those murder mysteries in which Poirot gathers all the suspects together to interrogate their alibis and unmask the culprit.

Here the crime is the disappearance of an award the hotel’s restaurant has won, the subject of much friction between the pompous manager, a stick-in-the-mud stereotype straight out of some low-rent 1950s English comedy movie, and the fiery Welsh chef, who’s the best thing in this whole sorry affair.

Why every guest would submit to aggressive questioning and room searches over something so trivial is the least of the problems here. For a broad pastiche of a genre already ripe with clichés we shouldn’t be so picky, but even with these relaxed expectations, the characters and story are a mess. 

The first 20 minutes are taken in with all the guests checking in – an unmanageable 11 of them by my reckoning, plus four staff members. With so little time to establish each one, they can only be thin stereotypes: confused old duffer, nagging battleaxe and henpecked husband, sleazy tabloid journalist, pushy showbiz mum…

Then the ‘crime’ is committed and they gather back for the investigation. But no one has a motive to steal such a meaningless trifle, and not enough’s happened for alibis and possible holes in them to be established. There’s nothing really to reveal, and the denouement makes no logical sense.

Combined with the shallow characters who converse entirely by shouting shrilly at each other, it’s all so very uninvolving. The conflict is rarely funny, either - there are maybe three decent gags in the hour. Having a celebrity baker called Saul Bollywood is the height of Chalkhill Theatre’s comedy ambition.

This is a production that shows neither love nor cynicism towards the genre it’s spoofing, just indifference. Audiences would be forgiven for feeling the same way.

Review date: 16 Aug 2021
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: theSpace @ Surgeons' Hall