St Nicolas Players

Note from the Director ...

 

From Agatha Christie to Dan Brown, the 'whodunnit' has fascinated fans and theatregoers the world over. The play you are about to see tonight is rather different - more of a 'did he do it?'.

 

Depite the title of Huge Whitmore's work, no-one is sure whether there is, in fact, a body to dispose of, or if we are merely witnessing the rapid mental deterioration of the principal character, Henry Preece, in whose tortured mind fact and fantasy become indistinguishable from one another.

 

It's been said, with some justification, that writers use only three or four basic plots, and this play could easily fall into one of the most commonly used - the discovered affair, and events following on from it. The fact that the two couples involved are middle-class, and the settings comfortably domestic, could easily have lulled me into taking a 'village hall' approach to the production, but I decided early on to steer it in a more radical, minimalist and, on occasion, surrealist direction. St Nics has never been afraid to push the envelope (to use that rather strange phrase in modern currency) and I hope you'll enjoy the result.

 

Bear in mind that this play is set in the 1980s, before computers came into general use, when mobile phones were the size of house bricks and forensic science was still quite primitive - no murdered would be convicted as a result of DNA tests as they often are today.

 

I have enjoyed working with this hugely talented cast, but I must make special mention of Producer Rob Nicholls, vastly more experienced in the ways of the theatre than I could ever hope to be, whose inspirational ideas have made my job easier than I could reasonably expected. I trust you will have an enjoyable and - dare I say it? - challenging evening.

 

Nick Fletcher, Director