“For Pete’s sake stay in character” the director enjoins the cast as they mill on stage, getting together for the first time since workshop and preparing for a soundcheck. There are missing scenery and props and confusion and stress reign, underpinned by concerns over a loss of jobs and the possible appearance of a VIP.
The characters they are playing revolve around Caris, the scion of the Sebastian and Stewart publishing house. She has the reputation of being hard, a perfectionist whose only soft spot is for her much younger sister Eleni, of whom she is protective. It seems not without reason as there has clearly been trauma in their past, an accident leaving Caris with a limp and Eleni with a gap in her childhood memory.
Through all this she has been assisted by the rather underappreciated Vera, a seemingly loyal staff member who goes out of her way to please. They are preparing for a company party; Caris teasing Elani over an apparent beau, a solicitor named Gaylen. Thrown into the mix are Charley, Caris’s ex-husband and new executive Kingsbury who seems keen on her.
The planned reception is however threatened with disruption by a radical church group who are protesting the publication of a novel based on crimes 25 years ago.
The structure of the production is a play-within-a play with a blurring between performance and reality, or perhaps something more Machiavellian. There are scattered references to Shakespeare, and while clouded pasts and fluid identities through characters who adopt disguises or engage in performative acts are part and parcel of many Shakespeare works the plots remain more credible than here.
The portrayed “cast” members appear to have a background in law enforcement, which comes in handy in trawling apparent red herrings in this metatheatrical mystery, but the denouement would give Miss Marple apoplexy.
The construction allows for the plot twists and ultimate revelation, but while intentionally “strange and playful” its self-referential tone and deliberate theatricality struggles to supplant what it describes as “mediocre drama”. The grand character of Carris carries much of the production, which really has fewer than a handful of meaningful characters with the remainder being pieces of the puzzle.
There are interesting ideas here but it’s chaotic and at the end of the day amounts to Much Ado About Nothing.
Show Times: 1 – 9 August 2025 at 3.55pm.
Tickets: £12 (£6.50).
Suitability: 14+ (Note - Contains distressing or potentially triggering themes).