Keeping up with the character connections is difficult enough without the multiple mobile phone rings that erupt throughout the performance – very frustrating since we are reminded by the ushers on entering the auditorium to switch them off. It seems we are all in the same boat with these offstage characters who bring so much import to Act 2, but are completely faceless names.

During Act 2, when one of the characters says with despair “I don’t know who anyone is anymore”, this brings an agreeing harrumph from the audience. Given that Leslie Darbon has crammed a 320 page novel into a 2 hours and 20 minute (including interval) stage play, there is no way that the play can be an exact replica of the novel and not being familiar with the plotline myself, I find it difficult to follow the connections between characters and who everyone is. It’s a dense plot and I find myself open-mouthed in concentration a few times during this headscratcher as I try to distinguish red herring from fact. From then on, the thinking cap is firmly on! I find myself straining to distinguish voices as the identity of the murdered character is kept from me for a deliciously frustrating length of time. The murder scene itself is very well done as the tension mounts, and the stage stays in darkness for what seems like a very long time. Then 3 shots ring out…a murder is accomplished. Understandably, the characters have very different reactions to this, ranging from fear to dismissal to humour – it’s surely just a game isn’t it? As the clock chimes the half hour, we suddenly find ourselves in darkness, with a new character on stage shouting at everyone to put their hands up, and shining a torch on them in turn. Using an advertisement in the local paper, the inhabitants of the house discover that a murder has been planned for 6.30pm that very evening. It is while Letty, Bunny, Julia and Patrick are sitting in the large drawing room of Little Paddocks, a house in the small village of Chipping Cleghorn, that we first discover that a murder has been announced. Agatha Christie’s A Murder is Announced, directed by Michael Lunney, is exactly what you would expect of a cozy mystery: quirky characters, an amateur sleuth, a comfortable and intimate setting…and a murder to disrupt the status quo.

A murder is announced plot