Madcap doesn’t quite convey the orchestrated madness which awaits the audience in this show. Conducted at a breathtakingly frenetic pace, you have to be on your toes to keep up with not just the pace of the action but the array of characters (13 at the last count) who pop up in the show. What’s even more remarkable about this production is that all parts are played by just two cast members, Lucy Keirl and Tom Babbage, aided by a piano and a multitude of sound effects.
In fact, the Foley Sound FX could really be viewed as extra members of the cast, called upon as they are to stand in for a variety of sonic deliveries during the show’s leap from scene to scene.
The action takes place in a BBC radio in 1959, its cramped interior standing in for a murder mystery set in America’s rural heartland. Commentary of sorts comes from the studio gallery but otherwise Keirl and Babbage are left to follow the madcap plot with the sort of energy that could cut fuel bills instantly for the entire nation.
Director Caroline Leslie has taken the bold step of seamlessly marrying sound and action so that the aural dimensions of the show are just as important as its visual ones. The move plays off handsomely and makes for memorable comic moments – and more than one audience intervention.
Keirl has the most onerous task of the show in playing al 13 suspects for the murder of crime novelist Arthur Whitney, which includes his wife, a shrieking harridan channelling the spirit of Katherine Hepburn. Babbage takes the role of local cop Marcus Moscowicz who thinks this is the case which can make his name in the ranks of the police and impress his chief. Other characters include a German psychoanalyst modelling Freud’s persona, members of a boys’ choir, a French ballet dancer who pirouettes effortlessly round the stage, and a masters student whose dissertation is on – you’ve got it – unsolved murder mysteries.
The musical numbers in the show zip along at a fantastic pace and Babbage and Kierl display amazing virtuosity in handling the piano and switchovers. The pace at which such numbers come along can make it has to keep up, but it’s all part of the fun of the show – it’s probably not meant to make sense, just to be thrillingly funny, which it succeeds in doing in spades.
The show takes us back to the heydays of radio and studio sound effects and to corny Hollywood detective stories which make Columbo look like Dostoyevsky, and underpins the truism that with a little imagination and a lot of props a whole world can be created for an audience.
Murder for Two is at Octagon Theatre, Bolton from 5 to 27 June 2026