{"id":432481,"date":"2025-09-18T01:15:21","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T01:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/432481\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T01:15:21","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T01:15:21","slug":"murder-at-midnight-birmingham-rep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/432481\/","title":{"rendered":"Murder at Midnight – Birmingham REP"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writer: \u00a0Torben Betts<\/strong><\/p>\n

Director: Philip Franks<\/strong><\/p>\n

Torben Betts\u2019 Murder at Midnight, the latest production in the 20 years of Original Theatre,\u00a0is billed as a comedy thriller: it\u2019s fair to say that it delivers more on the comedy side, a point made at the very beginning when we join police at Jonny the Cyclops\u2019 house in the early hours of New Year\u2019s Day to learn that they are investigating multiple murders committed with a variety of weapons, some more likely than others. As they depart the scene, we go back in time to discover exactly what happened.<\/p>\n

Jonny (Jason Durr) is a career gangster living a life of luxury, largely funded by drug dealing. He\u2019s back early from a trip and intends to surprise his longstanding girlfriend Lisa with a proposal of marriage. He has hanger-on Trainwreck (Peter Moreton) in tow.<\/p>\n

Living with Jonny is his mum, Shirley (Susie Blake), who, according to the programme, \u2018may, or may not have dementia\u2019. She has a carer, Cristina (Iryna Poplavska), of dubious immigration status.<\/p>\n

Also living in Jonny\u2019s home is Lisa (Katie McGlynn), his younger girlfriend and ball of energy. Not expecting Jonny home for several more days, she\u2019s taken the opportunity to attend a party and has been escorted back by Paul (Max Bowden), a self-confessed poor police officer trying to work undercover to gather intelligence on Jonny, especially about the disappearance of his first wife, Alex, some five years earlier.<\/p>\n

Oh! And then there\u2019s Mr Fish (Callum Balmforth), an acquaintance of Cristina\u2019s who arrives desperate to clear his debts with some seriously bad people.<\/p>\n

The first third of the play is pretty much fast-moving classic farce, with characters rushing around the house with spot-on timing, almost-but-not-quite bumping into each other as we begin to learn some more about their backstories. The success of this is massively helped by Colin Falconer\u2019s multi-level set, enabling the audience to watch events in many rooms \u2013 though occasionally this can become confusing if two scenes play out in two rooms independently, when there\u2019s always the suspicion that maybe you missed something of consequence in one area while focused on the other.<\/p>\n

There are two distinct strands to the plot: what happened to Alex all those years ago, and how did most of this group end up dead after midnight? However, there is so much action and humour that there is little space left for mystery, so many whodunnit fans will have spotted the answer to at least one of these questions pretty early on.<\/p>\n

The comedy side works really very well. Durr is superb as Jonny, the gangster with a passion for the music of Robbie Williams, delivering genuinely funny lines and wordplay while also being menacing and unpredictable. Blake flexes her comedic muscles, clearly revelling in her character and providing a memorable performance. Moreton\u2019s Trainwreck has surprising hidden depths as the cocaine-addicted but intellectually challenged bear of a sidekick. Bowden\u2019s policeman finds himself out of his depth as he gets entangled with Lisa, played by McGlynn nicely for comedic effect.<\/p>\n

The other characters, however, are more two-dimensional, although Balmforth is more memorable as the little fish in a big pond.<\/p>\n

Because of the lean towards the comic elements, however, what is missing is any real tension: it\u2019s much more in the farce tradition: take it on its own terms and you\u2019ll enjoy a light-hearted romp.<\/p>\n

Runs until 20 September 2025 and on tour<\/strong><\/p>\n

\t\t\tThe Reviews Hub Star Rating<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Writer: \u00a0Torben Betts Director: Philip Franks Torben Betts\u2019 Murder at Midnight, the latest production in the 20 years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,138142,748,147070,147071,393,4884,147072,147073,147074,146643,147075,147076,147077,147078,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-432481","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-birmingham-rep","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-callum-balmforth","12":"tag-colin-falconer","13":"tag-england","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-iryna-poplavska","16":"tag-jason-durr","17":"tag-katie-mcglynn","18":"tag-max-bowden","19":"tag-murder-at-midnight","20":"tag-philip-franks","21":"tag-susie-blake","22":"tag-torben-betts","23":"tag-uk","24":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115222657541071971","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}