For over a decade, Tangent Theatre has championed new writing to promote young talent, 'the life blood of theatre for the future.' Rose Miller is a 21 year old literature student at Penn State University, USA; “Criminology 303” is her first play, inspired by a legendary story about a slave based in her home town in Maryland as well as her own personal fear of the supernatural.
The setting is a University lecture theatre where we, the audience, are criminology students, training for a career in the police force. Retired Detective Inspector Norma Bates stands at the podium in front of a large screen showing the title, Psychological Perspective. After reminding us that our essays are due in a few days, she explains that she worked in the homicide department for 35 years. Her talk will explain case number 48192/84, the notorious Ice Cream murders. Addressing us with a stern expression and tone of voice, Jilly Bond looks the part, rather like Helen Mirren as the authoritative Detective Chief Inspector, Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect.
But there’s technical glitch as she tries to access the file on her PC - the screen image flickers and changes to a different murder case in 1976. This hiccup in proceedings at first seems to be factual, especially when a young man wearing a Fringe Venue 13 sweatshirt arrives to fix the IT problem.
But it's all part of the strange ghostly, time-travelling narrative, taking us in flashback to the night of 19th November, 1976, when Norma Bates was the scene of crime officer investigating the death of a boy, Daniel, a case she never solved. In the early hours of the morning, she interrogates Mr McLeod, in his dressing gown, the landowner of the Scottish Estate where the body was found.
But there is no change of stage set whatsoever to indicate that we are now in a grand mansion in the Highlands. Bates continues to question the surly, sullen Mr McLeod, now in a tweed jacket, both standing in front of the computer desk and backdrop screen. During their conversation we hear a convoluted tale about his wife who mysteriously disappeared on this very day in 1936. Are these deaths linked to a legendary figure who has long been seen haunting the woods holding a lantern?.
After a promising start, drawing us into a realistic scenario of a Criminology lecture, the production continues devoid of theatrical effects, atmosphere, mood or a plausible plot. When the house lights suddenly come up after just 25 minutes, a woman behind me said to her friend, “Is that it?” and a Dutch couple I met on the way out had thought it was the interval.
In TV terms, this is “Monarch of the Glen” meets “Taggart” without any characterisation, imaginative staging, dramatic tension or a thrilling muurrrrder.
Performance times:
6 – 27 August @ 21.30.
Ticket prices: £9.00 (£7.00)