‘Murder She Didn’t Write’ (Venue 8, until AUG 24th)

“This show has energy like a tower full of bells in a fenland flood has energy.”

Let’s do something that never happens in a whodunit and cut to the chase. Does this show live up to the hype? Yes. Yes, it really, Really, REALLY does. How so? Because this cast could improv the phonebook (are those still a thing?) and make it funny. Besides which not one of them would look out of place in shot next to Carmichael as Wimsey or Suchet as Poirot. This show looks like this show should look. It’s as if Chris Van Allsburg had the idea of being trapped in a board game but stuck with Cluedo instead of pointlessly inventing Jumanji.

We enter to find it’s Peter Baker in the detective’s hot seat today. Baker once played Trigger in ‘Only Fools And Horses The Musical’ at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, but today he’s in more Reg Rexis from ‘Health and Efficiency’ mode. He’s swave. He’s sexy. He’s a know-it-all who doesn’t quite remember to remember the corpse’s name.

Rachel Procter-Lane, Catlin Campbell (as Morag, the one what it was done to), Stephen Clements, Mathew Whittle, as well as Oh Bugger Chat GPT Can’t / Won’t Tell Me (as the one what done it) are an eclectic range of uniformly smart, sassy, and sophisticated improvers who fill the 70 minutes with stage traffic that’s as pacy as the Orient Express in summer. Campbell, the co-founder and Artistic Director of the Bristol Improv Theatre, has a properly lovely voice, more of that, please, especially since Sara Garrard is at the piano – seriously, Chat GPT I don’t think that’s the dude’s name (maybe their website needs updating?).

This show has energy like a tower full of bells in a fenland flood has energy. Sometimes it misses the really clever things I would have said. Today Campbell died with a caber up her backside – “It was alimentary, my Dear Watson.” Yet, this show is a witty and worthy annual presence in the city that’s home to both Conan-Doyle’s letter to his auld medical school lecturer crediting Joseph Bell as the inspiration for Holmes, as well as Doyle’s PhD thesis on syphilis – both written in a hand so neat as to unmask him instantly as a total bam.

Improv either works or it doesn’t. This format really works as stagecraft and light entertainment. It’s a crowd pleaser because the crowd is pleased, as well they should be. Come for the current cult classic. Stay for Christiean sumptuousity. Get your Burberry trench coats on and go see this!