Theatre Royal, Nottingham – until 26th March 2022
Reviewed by Boo Wakefield
3***
Moving a story from a book to the stage can be difficult, moving a thriller onto the stage even harder.
Theatre Royal, Nottingham presented Looking Good Dead, written by Peter James, during its UK tour. It is a story that follows the Bryce family, Tom and Kellie and their tech savvy teenage son Max. Times are fraught for them as Tom’s business is failing, money worries are escalating, and Kellie never stops spending money. Tom finds a memory stick on the train and instead of handing it in, brings it home to see if he can find out who it belongs to so that he can return it. He and Max open the file on the memory stick which immediately links them to a subscription-only SMS website where they witness a horrific murder being live-streamed. The murderers find out that the Bryces have seen the murder and events quickly spiral out of control with deadly threats and kidnappings.
The set (Michael Holt) is very clever with the main stage focusing on the Bryce’s kitchen/dinner. The police station set is rolled on an off at an alarming frequency at one side and the SMS cellar is on a high stage at the back. This is all made possible with clever lighting (Jason Taylor) making each area a clear focus during the quick changes. Much of the story is based around details from laptops and phones and the possible use of some sort of projection showing what was happening could have made it feel more up to date rather relying on the actors telling us.
Adam Woodyatt (Tom), currently on a break from Eastenders, fits well into the over-stressed husband who has expanded his business too quickly and can’t control his wife’s spending but falls short of expressing the horror and stress he surely must have felt when his life hurtles out of control culminating with his wife and son’s kidnapping. Likewise, Laurie Brett’s Kellie starts convincingly as a relapsing alcoholic and shopaholic but when chained up in the SMS cellar fearing for her life, her terror and fight for life seemed to ebb away.
In tonight’s performance, Armani Watt stood in for Ian Houghton as Jonas Kent and played the wealthy American businessman perfectly.
Harry Long plays the chief detective role well, although had little room to expand it. He was able to have several amusing moments with Branson (Leon Stewart) his sidekick, which lightened the mood.
This is a believable story with several good twists (which I won’t spoil for you) which bring together the end of the play tidily. The book would no doubt expand on the background of the characters which the play just wasn’t able to. Even though it was entertaining, I desperately wanted to suspend disbelief but aside from one moment with the hooded murderer unexpectedly appearing, the tension just wasn’t there.