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!