Sitting in Venue 3 at the Space On The Mile, getting ready for ‘Murder Club’ got me excited. Back at the fringe, ready for a day of reviewing (this show my first of three in this venue) and to see what talents Edinburgh Napier had to present to the theatre world and the industry as a whole.
The play is set in Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum in the late 1800s and based on true stories following two inmates Richard Prince and Ronald True. Watched on by the ghost of Olive Young, a prostitute murdered by True, and the Warden Jane Coleman as Prince attempts to join the Murder Club, a group of the world’s most renowned killers, by performing a play written by True.
Ryan Forrester gives an unsettling portrayal of True. When first introduced to the audience, he is a scared little mouse, fidgeting and nervous. But as the play progresses, we see Forrester let loose more of True’s crazy side and he is truly sinister at times, highlighting Forrester’s ability to switch between masked malevolence and nice-guy façade. He also uses his voice very well, with brilliant accent work and great intonation, he feels like he could coerce anyone into doing or believing anything.
Phoebe Duncan does brilliantly as Olive. She’s a brilliant narrator who addresses the audience very well. Her words and the story she tells is clear and precise, she manages to switch effortlessly between accents and voices when reliving past events or mocking people. Her broken and used portrayal of Olive is sad to watch yet a welcome and honest presence among all the deception on stage. The audience really empathise for her when she recalls her past traumas with parents and especially when describing in uncomfortable detail the moment of her murder. She is the perfect guide for the audience through this dark story.
Ewan McIntosh as Price is very strong. He plays the pompous and proud upper-class individual very well. Asserting himself above everyone else before the audience really gets a grasp of the actual power dynamic at play. His slow and believable switch in status and confidence is great to watch and delivered very well. His accent work is good also, if at points he did seem to stay quite monotone throughout, using a lot less intonation than his evil counterpart True. This could have been a purposeful decision, one that would be welcome and could hint at the fact that True mainly uses his voice to gain what he wants, whereas Prince doesn’t have the intellect for such trickery.
Annalise McNicol does very well as the bored, Murder obsessed warden, Jane Coleman. Her fed-up delivery of most lines allows for some comedy throughout, letting the many tense moments have a much-needed break. She is also believable as a woman in power, or at least a woman who believes she is in power. McNicol allows Coleman to slowly slip into True’s spell, all while keeping her razor-sharp instincts. However, McNicol would occasionally stutter over words, or hesitate infrequently, this could have been a character choice, one that would make sense in the grand scheme of things, but if this was the case, it’s a decision that needs to be clearer to the audience.
David Wotton did a good job in the Director’s chair. The play is blocked well, Olive’s ghost would often sit in chairs, getting up moments before another character would sit right where she was, reminding the audience that she’s not really there, it’s easy to forget as she never leaves the stage and is constantly watching the other characters interact. His lighting and sound were also very effective. Different colours and brightnesses are used to communicate to the audience when we are in the real world and when in the spirit world, where Olive resides.
Overall, this play is enticing and exciting. It’s very dramatic and keeps the audience on the edge of their seats. Each character has space to grow and breathe. As we learn how much of a monster True really is and the horrible things Olive has gone through in her life, the audience aches for Olive, the real heart of this piece, as she can only watch on and hope that no one else meets the same grizzly fate she did.
Get tickets for ‘The Murder Club’ below:
Theatre Scotland 
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