Fiery Angel Theatre Company deliver a sleek production at the Playhouse, says Angie Johnson
Many will be familiar with the Alfred Hitchcock film Dial M for Murder but I wonder how many are aware that it was originally a stage play. I was surprised when I became aware of this, bu t having now seen the current production at the Oxford Playhouse its theatricality seems only too apparent. This latest touring production from Fiery Angel Theatre Company is a real contrast to their acclaimed staging of The 39 Steps, eschewing fun and spectacle in favour of stylish sleekness.
A suave jazz soundtrack provides elegant but unnerving incidental music complementing perfectly the high production values in Mike Britton’s red themed period design. I particularly admired the use of a revolving central stage area (this did catch me out a bit at first — it moves at an almost glacial pace and it took me 15 minutes to realise what was going on!).
The big advantage of the revolving stage area was that it gave the audience a quasi-cinematic view of the action from various angles, compensating for the fact that the whole play is set in one room.The location of this thriller is the lounge room of a smart flat in 1950s Maida Vale, where retired tennis player Tony Wendice and his affluent wife Sheila share an edgy relationship. From the very beginning of the play you are intensely aware that there are plenty of secrets bubbling away beneath their urbane exteriors.
Kelly Hotten gives an intriguing performance. In contrast to ice maiden Grace Kelly in the movie, this Sheila is strong and sensual. The return to London, after an absence of a year, of Sheila’s former lover, Max Halliday, triggers Tony into instigating the final stages of the complex revenge he has been plotting against his wife. The detailing of the intricacies of his plan takes place in a lengthy scene with the man that he is trying to recruit/ blackmail into being his accomplice and unfortunately all this exposition creates something of a longuer. Happily, though, the pace was picked up again before the end of Act One with some dramatic strangling and stabbing episodes. In Act Two, the appearance of Christopher Timothy as Inspector Hubbard raised the temperature even higher as he delivered a crisp and sprightly performance that had the audience chuckling away.
Dial M For Murder is a good old fashioned crime thriller with panache.
Dial M for Murder
Oxford Playhouse
Until Saturday
01865 305305 or oxfordplayhouse.com
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