Indi­an Ink The­atre Com­pa­ny present their lat­est show writ­ten by Jacob Rajan and Justin Lewis  and com­mis­sioned by Amer­i­can the­atre com­pa­ny South Coast Reper­to­ry The­atre. Wel­come to the Mur­der House is a deli­cious­ly dark tragedy of com­ic pro­por­tions.

The dawn­ing of the elec­tric age in 1890’s Amer­i­ca brought about mas­sive tech­no­log­i­cal and social change cre­at­ing win­ners and losers. A gang of death row con­victs are set free for one wild night to tell the trag­ic sto­ry of their hero: the man who invent­ed the elec­tric chair. These con­victs give an iron­ic twist to the true tale of how Thomas Edi­son and a den­tist become entan­gled in this inven­tion in the name of progress. The fic­tion­al injec­tion of real Indi­an sci­en­tist Chan­dra Bose (whose world-lead­ing research into elec­tric­i­ty was ahead of its time) gives an Indi­an Ink twist to the telling.  

The play marks the return of Indi­an Ink’s co-founder Jacob Rajan and award-win­ning musi­cian David Ward to the New Zealand stage for the world pre­miere. Com­plet­ing the cast are Quentin War­ren, Jacque Drew, and Patrick Car­roll who tack­le a seri­ous sub­ject with humour and sass and por­tray mul­ti­ple char­ac­ters between them. Pre­sent­ed in dynam­ic vaude­vil­lian style the show fea­tures com­e­dy, pup­petry, live music, song and dance.