If there’s a dafter evening in the theatre than ‘Murder She Didn’t Write’, I challenge you to lead me to it. I’ll even buy you a choc ice!  This ‘improvised murder mystery¡’ self described as such by the company Degrees of Error, the principal mad hatter  behind the organised chaos being director and cast member Lizzie Skrzypiec. It was also appropriate that the  last 2025 tour date took place in the theatre that for the rest of the week houses ‘The Play that Goes Wrong’. A long tour await the company in 2026.

 

Some readers may be familiar with  the Mystery of Edwin Drood  the ‘the solve it yourself’ 1980s musical written by Rupert Holmes and based on the unfinished Charles Dickens novel of the same name. It was the first Broadway musical with multiple endings determined by audience vote. Well, Murder She Didn’t Write is that but on LSD!

 

Ms Skrzypiec hosts this lunacy as a 1933 Agatha Chrustie (yes you read it right) who invites the audience to pick an event, a significant item, and various other bizarre odds and sods. On the night I visited the improvised mystery involved a trip to Bradford, an orange wooden leg, a shark and a Titanic Support Group. You could try imagining the lunacy which followed but it wouldn’t come anywhere near to what was actually presented on the stage.

 

Apart from said Ms Skrzypiec,  a company of four improv. practitioners, attractively costumed,  played country house  occupants – although at this performance it was a Bradford hotel due to audience  choice- and proceed to out improvise each other under the auspices of mine host, ‘Ms Chrustie,’ with much broad comedy, mugging, ad libs and nonstop giggling at each other.

 

To be honest it was incredibly self-indulgent and juvenile. However, it was also incredibly funny. To sustain an improvised narrative themed show for 2 hours takes some doing but by and large the show, which is obviously different each night, works. Some of the comedy works better than others, but the cast carry it off with some style.

 

There is a set, sort of, in the manner of a ‘murder in the library’. There is also silent movie style piano accompaniment underscoring the mayhem. The performers run around a lot and as Will Shakespeare would have it ‘They have their exits and their entrances’, in this case rather more so than the revolving door at the Ritz hotel. The company all had their moments, Peter Baker  as the one legged murder victim in this case, who  in the narrative, lost his leg to a shark on the Ascot race course while jockeying (yes really) was particularly effective- he is also the assistant director- but in truth they all, namely Rachel Proctor-Lane, Sylvia Bishop, and Stephen Clements, had their moments in the sun.

 

Ms Chrustie plays detective after the interval to solve the crime correlating a most unlikely compendium of clues and motives. Somehow a freezer, a hole in a window, a temperature transient ‘thinking room’, and a ring of tobacco ash around the wall, all made guest appearances in the solution.   It was all delightfully barmy and the sold out house loved it and happily engaged in the spirit of the piece.

 

In truth, this show is a one trick pony and I’m not convinced it fully sustained its  conceit over two hours, but for most of the evening it was a pleasure to be entertained and warmed by its good humour, particularly so on a bitterly cold winter night.

 

Four Stars.

Reviewed by STEPHEN GILCHRIST.

https://www.murdershedidntwrite.com/