Theatre
Death of a Doornail
Manoel Theatre
Halloween half-term wouldn’t be complete without a gruesome murder mystery to give you goose bumps and make you inch your way to a tense foetal position on the edge of your seat.
MADC’s Death of a Doornail last weekend proved to be an entertaining piece because it turned all preconceived ideas about the genre on their heads. The production was in the good hands of its duo of directors Coryse Borg and Pia Zammit, who infused it with their own personal sense of humour.
What was enjoyable about the piece was that it didn’t set out to take itself seriously. It was light entertainment from beginning to end and this helped the audience enjoy the holiday atmosphere all the more, especially since they were invited to dress up for the evening in either period costume or as murderers complete with weapons. It was great seeing people go all out and joining in the spirit of Halloween.
Lee Meuller’s script took all the basic stock characters in a murder mystery and hyperbolised their idiosyncrasies, making them caricatures of themselves, while poking subtle fun at figures in pop culture.
Nathan Brimmer’s Narrator was a spoof of the omniscient voice so typical of detective and thriller novels – typified by Alfred Hitchcock – a role that his sense of comic timing helped him to manage very well.
The Narrator interacted both with the main cast members as well as with the audience and the two crossover cast/audience members, played by Krista Paris and Jane Pillow in the guise of two old ladies, Gertrude and Bernice, respectively. I really enjoyed their appearance as they linked the audience to the cast more cohesively and at the same time spoofed the two crotchety old men in the Theatre Box in the Muppet Show. I found the young Ms Paris particularly entertaining because she aged herself so well – from a young woman in her 20s, to look like a wizened old lady in her 80s.
The prosthetic make-up was all her doing – and was done extremely professionally, especially when one considers that it was applied on herself. Her bickering with Ms Pillow’s patient Bernice as well as with the narrator and the fact that both women mingled with the audience during the interval made it all the more fun.
An excellent set typical of the genre created the perfect backdrop for the motley cast of characters.
Alexandra Camilleri Warne and Daphne Ann Grech played cousins Priscilla and Edwina Doornail, and while Dr Warne was the ideal upper-crust snobby daughter of the supposedly murdered Albert Doornail, Ms Grech was an equally nosey and brainy blue-stocking girl from boarding school – think of the typical willowy Agatha Christie heroine and of Velma from the Scooby Doo cartoon series.
While John Fenech and Kate De Cesare played the stiff and snooty butler Mortimer and the knife-wielding cook, Mrs Morganford respectively, a cheeky Colin Fitz portrayed Doornail’s loud childhood friend, Salvatore Carbone, and Jo Caruana was Doornail’s new girlfriend, Candace Bambay, as ditsy, buxom and blonde as they come.
Ms Caruana’s Bambay was particularly good because she captured the essence of the character perfectly, with mincing Marilyn walk to boot.
The throwaway lines she had really helped create the strong interplay she had with most of the other characters, particularly the rivalry with Dr Warne’s Priscilla, Mr Fitz’s Sal Carbone and Katherine Brown’s Abigail – Doornail’s ex-wife.
Ms Brown was as theatrical and melodramatic as wronged ex-wives come and it was clear that she was having fun with her part. Enter Philip Leone Ganado’s well-played, enigmatic Inspector Bukowski to try to solve the bloody disappearance of Doornail, and you have the perfect recipe for murder mystery mayhem.
When Joe Pace turned up as a very much alive Albert Doornail in the end, and Edwina found out whose blood it really was, the audience, who had just previously had an open question and answer session which poked fun at murder mystery weekends and Cluedo all in one go, are treated to a comic surprise; that is, of course, until Doornail is poisoned by his celebratory glass of champagne.
With this much fun – from having Miss Bambay being asked what else she had hidden in her cleavage, to Mr Pace, Mr Fenech and Ms Decesare walking straight out of a novel – the audience was guaranteed a good time which, thanks to its self-deprecating humour, certainly murdered boredom completely.