Hi all,

Here we are with the first theatre review for 2022! To kick things off with a bang, we have a murder!

Okay, not a real murder, I recently went to go and see ‘Blackmail’ at The Mercury Theatre in Colchester! This version is an adaption of the original play written in 1928 by Charles Bennett. Retold by acclaimed playwright Mark Ravenhill tells the story of Alice (Jessie Hills) a little shop girl and her not to be messed with Mother (Lucy Speed), who run a popular shop in Chelsea. Along with Alice’s fiance Harold a Metropolitan Policeman. One night something goes wrong and all their lives are turned upside down in the space of one night.

I have to say first that I thoroughly enjoyed this play! I am a real sucker for crime documentaries and shows so after reading up on the show when I got the invite I knew I was going to enjoy this show. But there are a few things that I would like to touch on here in this post that I thought made it an, even more, enjoyable experience. 

First was how realistic everything was. Thought the show the character would always like cigarettes with matches, pour cups of tea or glasses of water, cut slices of bread amount other things and this was done right. When they pour they poured the tea out of the teapot actual tea would pour out, when they turned on the tap you could hear and see water splashing into the sink! This is something I feel that shows just don’t do enough of. By performing shows in this way it makes them as accessible to the audience as possible. 

The use of lighting was excellent, you could see everything that was going on stage very clearly, there was some during the night scenes which were a little tricky to see, but that’s okay, as there were no major actions scenes so I didn’t feel like I was missing much. Even if you have no vision you wouldn’t miss out either as the show is mostly dialogue. My only suggestion would be is to have better contrast with the characters’ costumes between each other and the light, there were times when I struggled to pick out Alice because of the colour of her dress colour in some of the night scenes. But all of the actors’ voices are all different and unique to the character, so if you have no vision you will be able to remember who is who very easily, plus every character’s name is mentioned a good three or four times at least throughout the show, I can’t imagine it would be too much of a problem to keep track of what is going on if you have limited vision.

All of the cast were excellent, you could feel the emotion, stress and anxiety of all of them at various points, and you could tell that they all knew their charters very well and connected with them. It is a small cast of only four so trying to remember visually who’s who isn’t too difficult. Each character’s costume is unique to them so that will also help. 

As I said at the beginning, I thoroughly enjoy this show and would happily go and see this again, and a highly recommend you could and seat whilst you can. It has a very limited run at The Mercury Theatre from Thursday 10th March until 19th March 2022. Tickets for the show can be found by ticketing the link here. Hurry up and buy your tickets, you won’t want to miss out on this!

Until Next Time,

The VI Critic