United Kingdom Peter James’s Picture You Dead: Palace Theatre, Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, 22.7.2025. (JPr)
The inspiration behind Peter James’s novel Picture You Dead is probably more interesting than the stage adaptation that for the final week of it tour arrived at Westcliff’s Palace Theatre. David Henty is styled ‘as the number one copyist artist in the world today’ which means he is now a respectable forger compared to his previous ‘lucrative business’ forging British passports. Finding its way into the play we learn from James’s essay in the programme how ‘The forgeries were brilliant … but for two tiny spelling mistakes which were to be Henty’s undoing. Her Britannic Majesty was spelled in the passports with only one “n” in “Britannic” and with a “g” instead of a “j” in “Majesty”’. During five years in jail Henty learned ‘to copy the work of any painter he turned his hand to’ and after his release he went legit, eventually! When James first met Henty ‘there was a blue plaque on the front door which read, “David Henty – The World’s No.1 Art Forger’. James told him ‘I thought you had to be dead before you got one. “You do,” he replied … “I forged it!”’ (We heard this too during Picture You Dead.) When James mentioned the old master Fragonard and Henty said it was possible to copy a picture ‘so authentically that the world’s leading authority on the painter would not be able to tell it was a fake’, James began planning Picture You Dead which delves ‘into the darker side of the art world’ with its forgeries whilst adding some murders.
I have not read any Peter James books and only seen some of the ongoing series Grace on ITV; however I did enjoy Looking Good Dead in 2022 (review here) and was hoping Picture You Dead would be as good, sadly it wasn’t for me. I suspect many enjoyed it more than I did, however the very brief applause at the end suggests no one was overwhelmed by it. Also, despite some – what I call – stunt TV casting (with stars of Call the Midwife, EastEnders, Coronation Street, Emmerdale, and even Strictly Come Dancing) the theatre was far from sold-out.
Harry and Freya Kipling – who are no relation to the cakemakers we must be told! – are on their financial uppers and a cheap £20 car boot sale painting turns out to be a missing Fragonard masterpiece. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace just happens to have reopened a cold case involving the mysterious death of an art dealer and yes that very valuable painting. The Kiplings – would you believe? – know master forger (copyist?) Dave Hegarty (based on David Henty) since Harry did some building work for him and of course Grace consults him too! After the painting appears on Antiques Roadshow (filmed and broadcast extraordinarily fast!) disreputable art collector Stuart Piper recognises it will complete his set of the artist’s Four Seasons. He sets his – less than straight dealing – associate Roberta Kilgore the task of getting the Kiplings’ painting by any means possible.
Into the mix there is the fact Freya is a diabetic, a burglar with a dodgy ticker and the fact that Hegarty is able to come up with Fragonard copies at a whim and distributes them even before the paint seems to dry. Despite one reveal which makes you jump in your seat there is very little tension built up by Jonathan O’Boyle’s uneven direction. Spoilers shouldn’t be an issue now, but I won’t spoil it in case you read the book, or this is one of the stories used in the TV series. Picture You Dead is nevertheless both implausible and predictable at the same time and this includes the plot device about Freya’s diabetic insulin, as well as the ultimate fate of the lost-found-presumed lost again Fragonard which you can spot from a mile off.
Adrian Linford’s intriguing – if restricting – set design does well to suggest the plot’s three important settings: the Kiplings’ plain lounge and the painter Dave Hegarty’s workroom which morphs into the greater opulence of Stuart Piper’s mansion. However, this is in no way a police procedural, so Grace and his sidekick Bella May were simply left to process across the front of the stage or stand about at the fringes of what action there was whilst frequently talking into a mobile.
I suspect the cast were a little demob-happy with this being their last week and I hope their performances might have been subtler earlier in the run. Anyway, the play veers oddly from the domesticity of BBC TV’s Not Going Out (Ben Cutler’s Harry is a dead ringer for a younger Lee Mack) to the some Killing Eve-style violence with Jodie Steele as the twin – in accents, deeds and action – of another Jodie … Comer. Unintentionally there was also an element of The Play That Goes Wrong when a vase was accidently broken, with the painting falling to the floor to be relegated behind a sofa before the interval; yet the morning after the night before shown magically back on the wall when we returned to our seats!
Apart from Cutler and Steele only Fiona Wade as an engaging Freya, Mark Oxtoby as the untrustworthy, jack-the-lad Hegarty, and Ore Oduba’s very disappointing, rather camp and far-from-intimidating Piper (the supposed villain) get much to work with. Gemma Stoyan is simply Grace’s earnest foil Bella; all Sean Jones needed as the – ultimately bungling – burglar Archie Goff is a bag marked ‘SWAG’ and Adam Morris is rather flamboyant as the art expert Oliver De Souza. Even George Rainsford’s Grace is little more than a cypher too, seemingly with no demons and even less personality … and with Shakespearean pronunciation at odds with those around him.
I suspect there were better Peter James books to adapt and just because this stage version wasn’t a success for me it won’t stop me from giving another one a try if it tours in coming years.
Jim Pritchard
Creatives:
Novelist – Peter James
Stage Adaptor – Shaun McKenna
Director – Jonathan O’Boyle
Designer – Adrian Linford
Lighting designer – Jason Taylor
Composer and Sound designer – Max Pappenheim
Cast:
Ben Cutler – Harry Kipling
Fiona Wade – Freya Kipling
Mark Oxtoby – Dave Hegarty
George Rainsford – Roy Grace
Gemma Stroyan – Bella Moy
Adam Morris – Oliver De Souza
Jodie Steele – Roberta Kilgore
Ore Oduba – Stuart Piper
Sean Jones – Archie Goff