A Christmas homecoming brings a bloodbath to a London home in this knockabout dark farce – it is ‘Knives Out’ meets Guy Ritchie. Playwright, Torben Betts, admits he wanted to create a satire on cockney gangster culture and he succeeds magnificently.
Our anti-hero villain Jonny returns to his old cockney ma, Shirley, and live-in girlfriend, Lisa, ready to spend his profits from his cocaine business on taking them on a trip to Barbados for the festive season. Unknown to Lisa, he is home early and is already in his office, when she brings back a bloke she has picked up at a party. Also unknown to her is that this bloke is an undercover cop placing himself in the house so he can investigate the disappearance – and possible murder – of Jonny’s wife. Was it Jonny, his sidekick, or his girlfriend who did it, or even his mother?
Opening the drama is Shirley, reading the tarot and predicting devastation for the family before the end of the year – and it’s two hours to midnight on New Year’s Eve. In comes Jonny, a villain to the core, ‘the pride of the East End’, strutting with vainglorious hubris, and talking about his plans for the future. Oh, no, we don’t think so.
The drama that follows is played out in real time over an ingenious set of five locations: the living room, the kitchen bar, the office, the bedroom and the outside path. While action takes place on one level, the characters in another location do not know what is happening so, while the villain’s girlfriend is being seduced by a policeman in the bedroom, Jonny is downstairs talking about how powerful and successful he is.
Much of Murder at Midnight is buffoonery with such stock characters as the bumbling copper and the inadequate burglar. It is the Whitehall Farce of lost trousers channelling the pop culture violence of Tarantino. There is a brilliant use of masks and dressing-up – Lisa and the undercover cop arrive back from a ‘vicars and tarts’ party dressed as a sexy nun and vicar; and the usual props of crime drama are all there – the rolls of money and the bags of cocaine, but to make it fun, the instruments of violence are exaggerated to the point of absurdity with two guns, a crossbow, a knife and a meat cleaver coming into play.
All the cast sparkle. Jason Durr gives the perfect amount of threat and edginess to his Kray-like Jonny. Susie Blake’s Shirley has a wicked charm as the soothsaying matriarch who may be half-demented or may be faking it to keep her venomous control over the family. However, all our eyes are riveted on Jonny’s psychopath sidekick, Trainwreck, played to great comic effect, but with a subtle innocence, by Peter Moreton. The audience’s sympathy for him was audible when we all gave sighs as he admits he just wants someone to love. Moreton gives a tip-top performance in making the audience root for a homicidal maniac.
Torben Betts offers us a fast-paced play with explosive dialogue. Absurdity comes from some of the dialogue: ‘Being a homo was good enough for Reggie Kray’, one character insists, only to engage the gathered company in a discussion about whether it was Ronnie or Reggie who was gay. With so many twists and turns the audience is kept on tenterhooks wondering what might happen next – and it was never what you expect.
A great night’s entertainment.
Venue: Churchill Theatre, Bromley
Cast: Jason Durr, Susie Blake, Peter Moreton, Iryna Poplavska, Max Bowden, Callum Balmforth, Bella Farr, Andy Mcleod
Director: Philip Franks
Designer: Colin Falconer
Production: Tom Hackney and Alastair Whatley for Original Theatre
Performance Dates: 26-29th November 2025. On tour until 4th April 2025.
Running Time: 2 hours 30 mins, including 20 mins interval