As The Wel­ling­tonista’s res­id­ent super-fan of after­noon murder mys­tery tele­vi­sion for old people, I was unbe­liev­ably excited to get the chance to see The Mourn­moor Murders, Maria Wil­li­ams and Alice May Con­nolly’s excel­lent satire of that whole genre.

And it was fant­ast­ic!

Detect­ive Thompson (Wil­li­ams) and Detect­ive Con­stable Detect­ive Agent Cooper (Con­nolly) must unearth dark secrets, solve a murder and deal with their enorm­ous amounts of sexu­al ten­sion with­in about 55 minutes.

Play­ing every single occu­pant of the town them­selves, includ­ing the creepy farm­er­’s prized cow, this show is a wild ride into just how good no-strings theatre can be when there’s tal­en­ted people at the helm.

From the two Fosse-obsessed com­munity theatre per­formers, to the pair that run the loc­al Uke­fest, to a chain-smoking tie shop own­er, and the town’s may­or Jim Shod­bolt, each char­ac­ter is dis­tinct and dif­fer­ent from the last, and all have a motive for murder. The Mourn­moor Murders cap­tures the quint­es­sen­tial Kiwiness of the loc­al murder mys­tery show scene, and high­lights exactly why they’re so enjoy­able.

I par­tic­u­larly loved the cli­max of the show, where two of the sus­pects (the Fosse twins) per­form the clos­ing song of Chica­go-Ho-Ho, an abridged rendi­tion of Cell Block Tango, and strut their way through some utterly bizarre and fab­ulous cho­reo­graphy before being igno­mini­ously hauled off stage by the police.

The Mourn­moor Murders is very, very clev­er, one hell of an exper­i­ence and it ful­filled my crime show-lov­ing heart. Don’t miss it!

 

This show is being per­formed at BATS Theatre in Wel­ling­ton until the 10th of May, 2019. Get your tick­ets from here!