April 2016 Production

In For The Kill Review

Review by Theo Spring for Croydon Advertiser

Written by Derek Benfield and billed as a murderous thriller, this play certainly delivered a goodly number of twists and turns plus, of course, an ending it would have been quite difficult to have guessed.

Timing is the 1990’s and Christine Woodhead’s set design, complete with its set of French windows, although necessarily sparse due to the size of the stage, gave the aura of an upmarket living space and the home of James and his second wife Paula.

Kicking off with the inconveniently timed visit of the enigmatic Frank, given inscrutable delivery by Ron White, the plot goes on to reveal Paula’s unfaithfulness with her husband’s business associate, Mark and the unexpected arrival of James’s daughter Susan whose script provided some very misleading red herrings.

As the unfaithful Paula, with a further history of more lovers during her marriage to James, Deborah Wyatt created a women very sure of herself and her ability to cover her tracks. The lies involved soon tumbled over themselves as those tracks unravelled. The initial scene between Paula and Frank was a little distracting with the pair wandering around too much but eventually sitting for short periods. Placings greatly improved as the play progressed with an excellent tableau to round of the revelations at the end of Act One.

Gary Shaw impressed as Mark who is unaware of Paula’s other lovers and is very much in love with her. He believes they are both successfully pulling the wool over her husband’s eyes.

Within the play, husband James does not appear until quite late on in the first act, giving both Ron White as Frank and Gary Shaw as Mark ample time to establish both their characters and their part in the plot – or so the audience are led to believe.

Susan is James’s student daughter, popping home unexpectedly for the weekend. Obviously devoted to her father and accepting of her stepmother, Mori Bates brought an insouciance to the role, hiding, unseen to the cast but not to the audience, to see and overhear Mark’s declaration of love for Paula.

Each member of this small cast contrived to keep the plot pot boiling, under the careful direction of Simon Church, and I wonder how many of the audience, on Saturday’s very full house, guessed the outcome. I got too caught up by all those clever red herrings to reach the correct conclusion.