Natural Causes - play review

Back in May, I reviewed Thriller of the Year, a play by Glyn Jones which was performed by my local amateur theatre group, the Bridgewater Players. I enjoyed the evening so much that I was keen to see their next production, and last night I again had a good time, watching Natural Causes by Eric Chappell. Oddly enough, the theatre, at Thelwall Parish Hall, an excellent community resource which was the setting for a talk I gave, just over a week ago, to Lymm and Thelwall U3A, which to my amazement attracted about 70 people on a wet Thursday morning.

Eric Chappell's name will forever be associated with Rising Damp, a highly successful sitcom with an excellent cast led by the brilliant Leonard Rossiter as Rigsby, the odious landlord. But Rising Damp began life as a play called The Banana Box, first performed in 1971, and Chappell was certainly a very capable playwright. Natural Causes dates from 1984, during the period (lasting roughly a quarter of a century) when Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth exerted a powerful influence on blackly humorous thriller writing.

Natural Causes is described as a black comedy, and it has elements of farce. It's not, first and foremost, a thriller, even though poisoning and attempted poisoning is central to the storyline. As in Sleuth, and many of the plays that followed in its wake (including Thriller of the Year), the lead character is a writer, in this case Walter Bryce, an author of historical biographies who is a former teacher, kept in the style to which he'd like to become accustomed by a depressive wife who keeps threatening to commit suicide.

Unknown to his wife, Bryce is having an affair with his secretary Angie, who is keen for Mrs Bryce's threatened demise to become a reality. The couple enlist the aid of "Vincent", from Exodus, a business which offers assistance to suicides in return for cash, and the complications start from there.  Paul Bidston and Howard Brooks led the way as Bryce and Vincent respectively, and were ably supported by Kelly Jane Sergeant, Ann Marie Saunders, and Andy Rushman. The result was an evening of good entertainment at remarkably modest cost. 

Deadfall - review

I wrote here a while ago about Desmond Cory’s obscure but intriguing book Bennett, and I’ve now watched a film based on one of his other novels. This is Deadfall, directed in the Swinging Sixties by Bryan Forbes, and starring Michael Caine.

Caine is a jaded jewel thief who is persuaded by an attractive Spanish woman called Fe Moreau (played by Giovanna Ralli) to undertake another heist. He becomes involved with Fe, and her rather unpleasant husband Richard (Eric Portman, who sadly died in 1969, just a year after the film was made). The robbery that he and Richard undertake is brilliantly interwoven by scenes at a concert attended by the people they are stealing from.

My enjoyment of those scenes was enhanced by the fact that the concert featured John Barry, who composed “Romance for Guitar and Orchestra” for that part of the movie - the concert performance is integrated into the script, and takes place while a robbery is underway. The soundtrack really has stood the test of time, and even though “My Love Has Two Faces”, the song over the main titles, sung by Shirley Bassey, doesn’t quite compare with Barry’s best songs for the Bond franchise, it’s still pretty good. Another bonus was an all too brief appearance by Leonard Rossiter, one of my favourite comic actors, but in a straight role here.

I felt that the later stages of the film were not as gripping as the first half, but overall it’s a good and original story; I suspect this is true of much of Cory’s work, though I don’t know whether the movie was faithful to his book. Cory lived in Spain for a number of years, and the Spanish scenes in the movie add to its glamorous quality. I gather he wasn't totally bowled over by the film version of the book, but all in all, it is well worth a look – not least for that marvellous music as well as Caine’s typically assured performance.