Off the back of their sell-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2024, Our Star Theatre is coming to York with their brand new murder-mystery play Death(s) at Sea.
But despite their best efforts, everything goes wrong!
Death(s) at Sea is a thrilling murder mystery set on a small ship carrying just five passengers and its Captain. When one of the party is found dead, the remaining passengers speculate and turn on each other until the real murderer is caught... but that isn’t exactly how this play turns out! Props fail, the set falls down, actors get drunk and concussed and conversations in the wings reveal far too much. It would be a miracle if they make it to the end of the play before one of them really kills someone!
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Your classic "play goes wrong" show written and performed by local actors
★★★★★
It was unfortunately one of the early casualties of Covid but now, finally, the Good Ship with no name finally sets sail into choppy waters which enable us to enjoy Death(s) At Sea. Coming from the local Our Star Theatre Company, this is billed as Sea, Sailors & Seriously Bad Acting! but before you get the wrong idea, the five actors from the company are playing the characters in a (decidedly!) amateur company which is putting on the play where one character is already dead before the show starts. This amateur company's name may give a clue as to their level of competence. They are the Chadburn Repertory Amateur Players…
There are some familiar faces in the show. Daniel Davis plays Michael who plays Professor Brooks, Ava Weetman plays Amy who plays Irene Throrn and Eleanor Catherine Smart who wrote the comedy also plays Hannah who plays Audrey Kettle (and who, in spite of scripting the show, ends up reading her character's lines from just about every prop and surface imaginable). New to the company for this show are Ricardo Alexander who plays Steve who plays Captain Carnaby (and an increasing number of other hilarious characters as the death toll mounts…) and George Cooper who plays Adam who plays Lord Dindigul and who, I am sure, will be auditioning for a certain part in the upcoming summer production of Fiddler on the Roof.
So the scene is set for a comedy where things go wrong. Microphones are left live, giving us an insight into what the actors really think of each other when talking backstage, animosity which also spills out on the stage. A sound and lighting director who fails to keep to his cues (ironically Our Star's own director Ben Mowbray!). Props that fail to perform on demand. And characters who cannot tell the difference between a bottle of gin and a bottle of poison. The animosity between the actors also spills out on the stage so we know what they really think of each other… But who out of these varied maniacal characters stuck on board a rudderless ship has the cause to be a murderer? All will be revealed…
This was the premiere of the show and, as far as can be ascertained from the viewpoint of an audience member, everything went as planned and things that should have gone wrong did go wrong. There is one more performance in Malvern before the show sets off around the country, including a stop at this year's Edinburgh Fringe.
And the joint production of Fiddler on the Roof as a Community Musical runs from 24th to 27th July.
Sat 7 - Sun 8 , Tue 10 - Sat 14 Dec
Comedy, song and dance in this very silly rollicking romp of a family pantomime. Sat 7 2pm is signed and captioned.