There are several meanings to dying on stage. In this production of Inspector Morse, written by the late Alma Cullen (who died in 2021 aged 83), the play opens with a production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The actor (played by Spin Glancy) is giving part of his To Be or Not to Be speech when Ophelia (played by Eliza Teale) arrives on stage to return to Hamlet the gifts he has given her. She speaks barely audibly and dies on stage.
In a play within a play, it is the actress who has died suddenly on stage – having seemed perfectly fine in the dressing room – and Morse, who happens to be in the audience, decides this is murder and he must find the killer.
To add to the intrigue, many of the lead characters are Oxford contemporaries of Morse – most of them with “history” relating to at least one of the others so this is particularly personal for our detective. We go back to his young years.
Sadly, though this is a deftly written episode of the Inspector Morse mysteries, it dies on stage in the other sense. Morse is a hard act to follow. The books were written by Colin Dexter. He read classics at Christ’s College Cambridge, became a teacher then worked overseeing exams at Oxford where the stories are set. Morse on television was famously played by the actor John Thaw.
Others may have different opinions but for me, this production, directed by Anthony Banks, is too often drowned out by the shouting.
It is a very shouty performance from both Tom Chambers as Morse and Tachia Newall as Morse’s assistant Lewis. Both at times perform with great presence and aplomb but if police officers got that wound up on their difficult cases at those intervals I fear they would expire with heart attacks before they had solved them. It’s very worrying.
They would unravel before they had unravelled the crimes. It just isn’t convincing that a detective has a nervous breakdown on every case. We do need to believe in the characters.
Charlotte Randle as Verity, the faded actress and lush (the good time who has been had by all) does a memorable job but one shade subtler would make it even richer. Jason Done has dual roles (very distinct and different as the apoplectic theatre director Lawrence (again would anyone actually survive decades at that exhausting level of anger – wouldn’t he mellow into greasy sneers?) and the calmly spoken Father Paul, the sorry and considered priest. The contrast is impressive.
There are natural performances from James Gladdon as the actor Freddy, Teresa Banham as the Oxford academic Ellen and Olivia Onyehara as Harriet, wife of the irascible director Lawrence.
The staging is interesting. It is a matter of skill to echo the different scenes you see on television but so many changes of scene – and the shabbiness of the sets (at times like the cobbled together bits you see in an amateur performance) can remind you that you are seeing a play rather than entering a world.
Inspector Morse – House of Ghosts is at Cambridge Arts Theatre until Saturday, February 14.
