Gruesome Twosome

DOUBLE BILL: The Speckled Band/The Murders in the Rue Morgue

The Blue Orange Theatre, Birmingham, Friday 27^th October 2023

A pairing of two-handers, an opportunity to compare and contrast, to trace the development of the whodunit… Also a chance to have a bloody good night out.

First up is  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Speckled Band, featuring the world’s most famous fictional detective, Mr Sherlock Holmes, portrayed here by James Nicholas, who has also penned this adaptation.  Playing Doctor Watson (and everyone else in the story) is the consistently excellent Darren Haywood.  Haywood drops into characters without even dropping a hat, conjuring up women instantaneously – the surprise shocks laughter from the audience – and donning a top hat and booming voice to embody the forceful Doctor Grimesby Roylott.  It’s like watching a virtuoso fiddle.  Watson’s narration draws us along with Holmes into the mystery: a young lady dies in a locked room.  Even though I know who dun it, the storytelling is exquisite and I can’t wait to see how it is played out.  Nicholas and Haywood portray the prickly Holmes/Watson dynamic like old hands, capturing the eccentricity and sometimes coldness of the former, and the warmth and humour of the latter.  Inevitably, it’s a wordy piece but Oliver Hume’s direction keeps things moving, drawing on the charisma of his brace of actors and the intrigue of the story to keep us hooked.

Next is Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue, which is generally credited as the first detective story.  We have Poe to thank for the genre, which had a bloody birth in the form of this mystery.  Importantly, the story gives us the detective as lead character: we meet C. August Dupin, a smug know-it-all.  It’s easy to see him as a prototype for Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot.  Dupin (every time I hear his name I want to add du vin, du Boursin) is played by Darren Haywood, mercifully without an Inspector Clouseau accent!  This time it falls to James Nicholas to provide the rest of the characters, and he does so in a dazzling display of his versatility as an actor.  Writer-director Mark Webster’s adaptation doesn’t stint on gory details, nor on comic relief to keep things palatable.  Animated projections on a screen at the back depict illustrations in a book, stylised representations of the grisly crime scene – it’s left to our imaginations to picture things in detail.  The turning pages remind us of the genre’s literary origins.

Both stories play out on the same set (by Webster and Ben Mills-Wood), a clutter of wooden crates and period objects.  Simon Ravenhill, Haina Al-Saud, and Nasrin Khanjari have provided period costumes, which play a big part in creating a sense of the time, and assisting the actors to portray a variety of characters quickly and succinctly.  Nathan Bower’s lighting changes and sound design conjure up locations and atmosphere expertly.  The intimate space of the Blue Orange begins to feel like a locked room itself…

It’s a thoroughly entertaining evening, performed to the hilt by two of the Blue Orange’s star players.  You can almost hear the cogs turning in the heads of fellow audience members as they try to solve the cases for themselves.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

James Nicholas (right) looking concerned about the flamboyance of Darren Haywood’s bow-tie