THE curtain falls abruptly on a performance of Hamlet when Ophelia meets an unscripted end ahead of schedule. Cue Morse, in the audience with Professor Ellen Underwood, and several metres of crime scene tape and the stage is set for the indomitable Oxford sleuth to do his stuff.
It soon turns out that Hamlet’s father is not the only ghost in the theatre, and Morse finds he has to confront his own past before the case is resolved.
So far, so good, but Colin Dexter’s Morse in House of Ghosts, which runs until Saturday at Malvern Theatres, isn’t Morse as we know him.
There is little subtlety here and, indeed, when death struck a second time the appearance of the body was greeted not with gasps of horror, but with laughter. The action was presented in a series of short, staccato scenes, rarely involving more than two of the cast of ten at one time, which offered little opportunity for character development or, more importantly, time to engage the audience. It all felt perilously like Morse-by-numbers with a cast of stereotypical suspects and a denouement that couldn’t have been more clunkily signposted if cue cards had been held above their heads.
Expectations were high, how could they not be with the name of one of TV’s most iconic detectives in the title, but House of Ghosts failed to live up to them. Set in 1987, apparently 25 years after an earlier production of Hamlet that many of the characters had been involved in, there was a strange disparity in their ages and Morse, played by Colin Baker, was certainly the wrong side of 50, which proved slightly distracting. As did the occasional moments when a scene was played, inappropriately, for laughs, as when Verity Carr falls off the wagon after 15 years on it, and when Morse attempts to plant a kiss on Ellen Underwood’s cheek. Even more incredible was the idea that Morse might seriously consider leaving the CID to return to life as a student - surely a step too far?
The one element that is absolutely essential in any mystery worth the name is a bucketful of tension and sadly House of Ghosts gave us little if any, so that the resolution of the crime was both unsurprising and unsatisfactory.
Colin Dexter's Morse in House of Ghosts runs until Saturday, October 9 at Malvern Theatres. To book, call 01684 892277 Or book online now
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