Chris Eldon Lee reviews Looking Good Dead which is at Shrewsbury’s Theatre Severn until Saturday 12th February … and touring
I’m an EastEnders virgin … so the actors Adam Woodyatt and Laurie Brett are completely new to me. But, by God, are they good. All those years working together around Albert Square have fine-tuned their domestic chemistry to such a degree they step onto the stage as a highly polished double act. Their loving and bickering are completely convincing, and together they are the bedrock of this new stage adaptation of yet another of Peter James’ highly successful Detective Superintendent Roy Grace novels.
Woodyatt is Tom Bryce, a middle-aged, small-time business executive, who has somehow let his bank balance slide £150K into the red. Brett is his second wife, Kellie, who starts on the vodka at breakfast time and can’t curb her profligacy. Their impetuous son Max, played by Luke Ward-Wilkinson, wears bright red sound-cancelling headphones so he can’t hear his frumpy parents arguing about spiralling spending and deepening debt. They are the heart of a remarkably good play that had me gripped throughout.
This is a good old-fashioned throw-back thriller, but with right-up-to-the-minute content. It has humour (there is an early sure-fire local joke that gives the audience permission to laugh) but the overwhelming emotion is unnerving fear … as the play prays on our increasing concerns about the evils of the modern world; security, surveillance, phishing, blackmail and kidnap. The Bryce family is falling into a not-too-distant future where freedom, financial stability and peace of mind are things of the past.
The initial engine of the story is perhaps far-fetched. Tom picks up a USB stick dropped by a fellow train passenger on the way home. To try to trace its owner, he puts it into his computer, and it takes him to a sordid site on the dark web where real-life snuff murders are committed for the benefit of paying subscribers. An elegant escort is chained to a chair and her throat is cut live on-line. The criminals make a killing in both senses.
Tom and Max are horrified and when they try to extricate themselves, their hard drive is wiped, and the threatening phone calls begin. “Whatever you do, don’t go to the police”. Which is precisely what Max does of course, otherwise it wouldn’t be a Detective Superintendent Roy Grace story.
Such is the power of the portrayal of the family, the police are practically support artists. Harry Long plays upright Grace with the air of a public school head boy. We learn little more about his private life (he has a new partner for his colleagues to rib him about) but his detective work is as slick as ever as he races to prevent further gore.
With the benefit of retrospect, there are holes in the plot to be picked. There is one particularly unconvincing character who is obviously phoney from the outset. But the question is why? If something seems too good to be true, then it probably is. But if he is lying, then for who’s benefit?
Condensing a full novel into two hours traffic on the stage is bound to throw clues a little too close together for comfort. But it’s a tribute to this production that its pace and panache are so expertly handled, one is simply carried away by events with barely a moment to take stock. Consequently, the carefully contrived reveal – a real sleight of hand – brought forth a huge involuntary gasp from the full house.
It’s a deeply disturbing play, actually, that will touch the nerves of anyone who’s ever received a scam call or a dodgy email and, thankfully, spotted it just in time. Peter James has tapped into our growing vulnerability and produced a thumping good storyline which playwright Shaun McKenna and director Jonathan O’Boyle have very successfully transformed into an excellent piece of theatre, with subtly dimming lights, a sinister underscore, startling staging and top class acting.