Theatre: The Business of Murder.......

Presented by Middle Ground Theatre Company
Written by Richard Harris

     Psychological thriller The Business of Murder by Richard Harris, which enjoyed a successful 7-year run in the West End, is brought to Ipswich this year by Middle Ground Theatre Company.
     Stone, a humourless and dour man, invites Dee, a television playwright, over to his flat on the premise of discussing a script. Once there, she is surprised when superintendent Hallett, the man with whom she is having an affair, also arrives for an entirely different reason.
      But nothing is as it seems, and as the plot twists and turns the motive of their host Stone gradually becomes clear. They are all, it would seem, in the same business.... The Business of Murder.

Starring Robert Gwilym (Dr Max Gallagher in Casualty), alongside Paul Opacic (Bad Girls, Emmerdale and Hollyoaks) and Joanna Higson (Shameless, WPC56).

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As we took our seats we were already commenting on the good set, a fully furnished one bedroom flat in the late 1970's style.

Just a cast of three with a tremendous amount of dialogue, believable characters with Mr Stone having a very annoying personality that I didn't like him at all, then as parts of the story unfolded I warmed to him and felt quite sorry for him and then it turned again to finding him totally obnoxious (clever acting).

My two companions didn't think they were going to enjoy any of it by the mid-interval with P predicting the whys and hows of the plot to come, but the second half won them over especially as P had got it exactly right. I enjoyed it all although I thought it unnecessarily stretched out a bit.

It was lovely seeing almost every audience seat filled too. Unfortunately the summer programme didn't inspire the three of us enough to book our next before September.
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