United Kingdom Torben Betts’s The Other Side of Murder: Palace Theatre, Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, 9.11.2026. (JPr) ****
In a ‘Director’s Note’ by Philip Franks in the programme you can read how The Other Side of Murder is ‘the third play by Torben Betts that I have directed for Original Theatre company – the “murder trilogy”, as we can now legitimately call it. I’m not sure a trilogy was ever the intention and you certainly don’t need to have seen the other two to enjoy this one, but the plays do have certain things in common. In each of them a familiar trope is established, subverted and turned into something else. Murder in the Dark [review here] starts as a haunted house thriller and becomes a tale of punishment and damnation. Murder at Midnight [review here] begins as a marital farce in the world of Essex gangsters and ends in a blood stained pileup worthy of a Jacobean Tragedy … In common with the other “Murder” plays and indeed much of Torben’s work, he uses humour, violence and the supernatural to keep the audience alert and guessing and (we hope) entertained.’
The two previous plays can be streamed here; Murder in the Dark is, as I suggested at the time, worth seeing, but Murder at Midnight is one of the worst murder mysteries I have ever seen in the theatre; only equalled by The Mousetrap (at least in its current touring version). Thankfully I was indeed ‘entertained’ by The Other Side of Midnight, though it is nothing new and what’s happening is blatantly obvious, its tone uneven, the central role miscast, and it rushes hastily to the end; however unique that might be (no spoilers here). As in the previous three plays, writer Betts and director Franks give the audience colourful characters (if rather caricatured), much well-choreographed farce and an increasingly chaotic plot, lowbrow and dark humour, some suspense, make-you-jump moments and a certain amount of violence.
We enter the theatre with Rufus Hound already sleeping on the sofa of Colin Falconer’s TV sitcom-like single kitchen/lounge set, which looks more like a flat than part of a house that it is supposedly in. We discover he is Darius Divine (real name Peter) a former hypnotist, now (fake) TV medium, on the cusp of TV comeback due to the notoriety of a Celebrity Big Brother appearance. Hound is very personable on the stage, but his character is not believable. Few of those who get ‘cancelled’ ever return to the spotlight and anyway he appears rather clueless from the start, can’t find his glasses, struggles with the lines he has to learn to open his show and as everything descends into chaos around him, he is simply a Poundland Basil Fawlty. This is more a criticism of the script than Hound’s portrayal as Peter/Darius needed to be someone slick, smarmy and deeply guarded like Bob Monkhouse (for those who remember him). Peter is revealed as a serial adulterer with illicit affairs carried out at Wetherspoons in Stoke and Slough’s Travelodge … but that, for me, wasn’t the handlebar moustachioed Rufus Hound!
Soon we meet the young Laura (the excellent Aisha Jawando) whose relationship with Peter has ended but she is pregnant by him. She demands he gives her messages from her mother who died in a car crash, as well as a considerable amount of money … or else she will scupper Peter’s return to the big time. When Peter’s loyal wife, manager and producer, Susannah (an earnest Carla Mendonça), returns from shopping she mistakes Laura for the French chef she has hired, Sylvie. Some of the ensuing scenes are hilarious, with particular emphasis on an age gap, so when Susannah quotes ‘I Will Survive’, for Laura it is a case of ‘who is Gloria Gaynor?’ Susannah and ‘Sylvie’ bond and try to prepare a meal for Peter and Susannah’s Gilbert and Sullivan obsessed mother, Miriam, as well as his long-estranged daughter from a first marriage, Jen (a lively Maddy Banks replacing Beth Lilley), who is home from Australia.
It is Miriam (another delightfully dotty performance from Susie Blake) who will prove central to everything which eventually unfolds. She resents having signed over the house to Peter and Susannah now finding herself consigned to a granny annexe; though more importantly she claims to be a spiritual medium too.
Peter resists Laura’s demands and when they are alone she threatens to kill herself and her unborn child, but gets fatally stabbed, though it is an accident. On the return of a shocked Susannah, Laura gets stuffed under the sofa as Jen (‘never Jennifer’) arrives and the first half ends.
There is a danger of giving the game away if I delve too long into the second half (it is a short play, barely 90 minutes plus interval). Peter becomes increasingly exasperated and spirals out of control; there are some spooky goings on enhanced by dramatic lighting and sound effects (though there is a strange use of music). Some of John Bulleid’s visual illusions were not entirely clear from my seat hallway in the stalls but there was a hovering bloodied knife a one point. Miriam begins to commune with the dead and eventually reveals Laura’s fate. Soon Laura’s gun-toting husband Jason (who Andy McLeod convincingly shows suffering with PTSD and high as a kite) burst in and Peter blurts out a confession, before an oddly protective Susannah has Peter hypnotise him to frame Jason for Laura’s murder.
An outline of the final minutes is that Peter’s nefarious past comes (literally) back to haunt him as he ends up – for some reason – in his underpants, while Susannah gets to reflect on how hard it is to grow older as a woman married to a famous man with an eye for the ladies; and it all ends with Miriam singing G&S’s ‘A More Humane Mikado’ (with the line ‘To let the punishment fit the crime’). There is a lot more to ponder on with the final surprising twist, but Original Theatre want secrets to be kept … and I must.
For more information about The Other Side of Murder tour and for tickets click here.
Jim Pritchard
Featured Image: Carla Mendonça (Susannah), Susie Blake (Miriam), Rufus Hound (Peter) and Beth Lilly (Jen) © Manuel Harlan
Creatives:
Writer – Torben Betts
Director – Philip Franks
Designer – Colin Falconer
Lighting designer – Jason Taylor
Sound designer & Composer – Max Pappenheim
Illusion designer- John Bulleid
Cast:
Rufus Hound – Peter
Susie Blake – Miriam
Carla Mendonça – Susannah
Aisha Jawando – Laura
Maddy Banks – Jen
Andy McLeod – Jason
With Oliver Byng, Sarah Lawn