Whodunnit [Unrehearsed] 2

by Jez Bond and Mark Cameron

seen at the Park Theatre, Finsbury Park on 8 March 2022 

A disparate group of people forced to be together while on a cruise on the Nile; a time (the 1930s) when social status can be marked by accent and preoccupation; the interruption of pleasure by the discovery of a body; a confused detective brought in to solve the mystery: hasn't all this sort of thing been done before? Don't the stereotypes of a southern belle with a daughter who has ambitions on the stage, a toff from Eton, a European who could be a bounder, a nun who can send Morse code with a searchlight, and a deckhand with a past, just ring bells of alarm?

Yes, it has been done, and yes the bells do ring, but the result in this engaging play is a masterpiece of comedy, ranging from social satire to pantomime gags with a healthy dose of vertiginous unpredictability. For the major conceit of the production is that at each performance someone from a roll call of actors and entertainers will be the detective, without prior knowledge of the script. He or she is fed lnes through an earpiece with only minimal, or even positively misleading, clues as to who should be addressed or how the plot is developing. The permanent cast has to cope with the repercussionss of the detective's confusion while gently nudging him or her to do more or less the right thing at the right time.

At the performance I attended Detective Adam Hills took on the case with a mixture of glee and trepidation. The set up was explained to him and to the audience before the play started, and the lucky member of the audience whose name was picked from a ballot to take a minor role in the second half was identified. Then the fun began, and lasted for the duration. It proved impossible for even the experienced cast to keep straight faces throughout, and Adam Hills rose to the occasion with great flair and good humour, even responding to the demand to perform a Music Hall turn with a near flawless recitation of Banjo Paterson's poem 'Clancy of the Overflow'. Though he had carefully explained that the poem was written well before the 1930s, he inadvertently said 'Facebook' rather than 'cashbook' at one point, an anachronism too far which merely added to the chaos.

Jez Bond (also the director) and Mark Cameron (also Giovanni Scaletti the European bounder) have created a wonderful entertainment designed as a fundraising project for the theatre they love, with support from Caroline Deverill as Mrs Constance Coddle, Aisha Numah as her daughter Molly (yes, the puns were that bad), Adam Samuel-Bal as Jasper Jarvis whose excuse and explanation for everything was that he had been at Eton, Lewis Bruniges as Jack Jones the deckhand and Molly Barton as the semaphoring nun. Some degree of control was provided by the line feeders Natasha Colenso and Robert Blackwood. The various detectives provide their services without payment.

In a Q&A session after the show it was revealed that this was indeed the second Whodunnit, and a third is in the making. The authors have clearly learned how to fine-tune their material, while Adam Hills admitted that he had taken part in the first play so he knew that the best way to deal with the challenge was to cede all control to the cast and crew and simply enjoy himself. Luckily he knew Paterson's poem very well. Sometimes a Q&A session can detract from the magic, but on this occasion it served only to enhance it.