Lockdown has affected everyone with its isolation and inability to get out of the house to do the things we usually love to do, especially to enjoy live theatre. Producers have responded to this challenge by innovating in the online streaming world to various degrees of success and with varying sizes of budgets! Aria Entertainment has produced what it calls a nine-part “episodic murder mystery musical” with a very impressive and talented cast. Yet the result is a rather silly, often bonkers, spoof of the Agatha Christie genre which creates the feel of being in a very bad illogical dream with confusing characters and scene changes.
The problem is the format of the piece. Filmed in lockdown in what looks like each actors’ own homes and then cut together to give the appearance as far as possible that they are interacting with each other, it is a mishmash using split screens, simply redressed rooms to try and create some consistency and edit to try and make sense of the shots! Worse at times the audio is not quite in sync with the video creating a distracting visual effect. There is a well-made opening title sequence with appropriate Cluedo style music which sets the scene but when you watch all nine episodes back-to-back it does eventually dominate the viewing and become irritating!
There are some good elements like the attractive looking set model box used to create a sense of location to the home videos, some clever multi-screen sequences to create choruses and some green screen insertions. The music too has potential. Written by Jason Howland with Lyrics by Nathan Tysen I can imagine enjoying some of the songs in a stage version spoof murder mystery. The title song sung by Jason Manford is a lively scene setter, Oscar Conlon-Morey (recently seen hamming it up in Only Fools and horses) amuses with a song about the open sea and a “shipload of fools” and Rachel Tucker has great fun as an online fantasist making folding up clothes sexy in “My own Identity”. Indeed, these three would always be worth seeing on stage and their talents and those of the rest of the cast feel wasted here.The confusion is amplified by each performer playing simultaneously two characters: a theatrical character playing a part of a dinner party murder mystery guest. Jason Manford is Varthur Mc Arthur (and the V is very important) as well as the ringmaster, in a splendid red top hat and tails, in the Steamboat circus. Amara Okereke is Lily Wright, a young starlet and the lion tamer (with make-up whiskers). 
Debbie Kurup is Vivika Orsonwelles, the leading lady and a mauve clown. Cedric Neal is George Murderer, the leading man, and the Captain of the ship. Oscar Conlon-Morey is the designer Shea Crescendo, and a trapeze artist Rosetta Stone and Clarke Staples (Lucas Rush) is the stage manager and a stowaway. Ashley Samuels played a brummie chorus lad, Cameron MitchellJohn, as well as the ship’s steward. The very names hint at the standard of writing which is so often a feature of murder mystery dinner party box sets!
Debbie Kurup is Vivika Orsonwelles, the leading lady and a mauve clown. Cedric Neal is George Murderer, the leading man, and the Captain of the ship. Oscar Conlon-Morey is the designer Shea Crescendo, and a trapeze artist Rosetta Stone and Clarke Staples (Lucas Rush) is the stage manager and a stowaway. Ashley Samuels played a brummie chorus lad, Cameron MitchellJohn, as well as the ship’s steward. The very names hint at the standard of writing which is so often a feature of murder mystery dinner party box sets!It is down to Emma Salou to wonder around her flat corridor opening doors to solve the mystery as a traffic warden turned Inspector Clouseau investigator, although for some reason we also see an older version of herself played by Harriet Thorpe writing her memoirs. Ben Forster plays himself as a digital insert for no obvious reason except that they had the technology to put him in the soup. Only Rachel Tucker as Joan MacArthur is given the material to shine, and she lifts the show with her high energy comic turns. I almost wished she would break into her cabaret song its “Tucker with a T” at every appearance.
Its harmless cheerful tongue in cheek nonsense, delivered in the same way that Death drop, which returns to the Garrick Theatre shortly, sends up the crime detective genre unmercifully but with the talent booked and the technology used it ought to have been funnier and more entertaining. Perhaps as a stage show, it might be where the cast can react to the audience and to each other to much better effect.Review by Nick Wayne
Rating: ★★
Seat: Online | Price of Ticket: £24
