Hold the line, caller: Dial M for Murder at the Belgrade
Dial M for Murder written by Frederick Knott, at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry. Running from 22 – 26 September.
Review by Amanda Burden
I am about to reveal my vintage here, but - like millions of UK families in the 80s - I once regularly watched a television programme in which a giant animated dustbin presented fiendishly complicated conundrums to members of the public, who were then expected to decipher them in exchange for prizes such as a 24-piece dinner service, an all-in-one garden canopy and barbecue, or whatever passed for an aspirational household status symbol in yuppie-tastic Britain.
Similarly ancient people will, like me, remember 3-2-1, with the now-legendary Dusty Bin, a celebrity garbage receptacle when Count Binface was just a twinkle in the eye of British political irony.
If the sight of a talking bin presiding over a television quiz wasn’t strange enough, the actual premise was equally bonkers. Dusty Bin would present a series of increasingly impenetrable clues, and contestants had to somehow decode them into a single answer.
The clues twisted and turned. They doubled back on themselves. They appeared to represent one thing and then, several mental calisthenics later, meant something entirely different.
Which brings me to Dial M for Murder.
Frederick Knott’s fiendishly well-constructed thriller operates on much the same principle. Except that instead of winning a bronze-plated hostess trolley, the stakes are considerably higher for the cast.
Set in London in 1952, the story revolves around Tony Wendice (Pete Ashmore), his wealthy wife Margot (Tanya-Loretta Dee), her lover Max (Simon Pothecary), and a murder plot so carefully engineered that it initially appears almost foolproof. One phone call. One plan. One fatal mistake. And from there everything begins to unravel at top speed.
The extraordinary thing is how much of the story pivots on something as apparently mundane as keys.
Whose key? Where is the key? Who had the key? Who knew about the key? And, crucially, who thinks they know where the key is?
As someone who loses her own keys approximately as often as she changes her pants, this was terrifying.
Suddenly the prospect of misplacing my keys ceased to be a minor domestic irritation and became the sort of thing that could, apparently, result in a murder conviction.
This is obviously not a practical guide to criminal liability for people who routinely leave their keys in the fridge. But it does illustrate just how cleverly the play turns tiny, apparently insignificant details into the machinery of a murder.
This is what makes Dial M for Murder such good fun.
You know from the get-go what Tony's plan is. This is no conventional whodunnit. We instead witness a man constructing an elaborate house of cards and then desperately attempt to stop it collapsing.
Every detail matters. Every innocent question could be dangerous. Every apparently insignificant object may suddenly become Exhibit A.
And every time you think the situation cannot possibly become more complicated, it does.
The result is a plot that is complex without feeling gratuitously complicated. There is an almost scientific pleasure in watching the pieces move around the chessboard and realising several minutes too late why something you barely noticed earlier matters enormously.
The production also captures the period beautifully. The mid-century world of respectable drawing rooms, immaculate clothes, telephones, cigarettes and impeccable manners is the perfect foil for Tony, the mild-mannered salesman concealing the heart and mind of a stone-cold maniac.
He is the sort of man who appears to have been ironed before entering the room. Polished, controlled, charming and entirely respectable - until you notice what is hiding underneath.
The character was made famous on screen by Ray Milland and in the 1954 Hitchcock classic. But there is something particularly effective about seeing Tony's machinations unfold live on stage. Without the distance of the camera, the upper-middle class veneer becomes even more unsettling. You are watching a normal civilised man calmly explain something monstrous, and making it sound like a reasonable piece of everyday household admin.
That is theatre at its best: you are not just watching the story unfold. You are sitting in the room while it happens. It's almost like hearing your next-door neighbour apologetically explain that sorry, he won't be able to feed your cat when you go away next week, because he's already made plans to brutally butcher his mother-in-law.
The cast handle the material with the polish you would hope for from a Hitchcock classic, appreciating that sometimes the most effective thing an actor can do is stand still and let what they have just said sink in.
The great success of Dial M for Murder is that it takes an apparently straightforward plot - a husband wants his wife dead - and reverse engineers it to keep us guessing.
Like one of Dusty Bin's infernal puzzles, the clues suddenly click into place. Only this time there is no 24-piece dinner service waiting at the end. Just murder - and a lot of fun along the way.
For tickets, please go to: https://www.belgrade.co.uk/events/dial-m-for-murder/
Comments