‘Inspector Drake’s Last Case’ is full of predictable yet superbly timed gags such as the Inspector holding up a gift-wrapped suitcase and declaring, “That’s another case wrapped up!” As his side-kick Sergeant Plod puts it as he introduces the audience to this spoof murder mystery, “Murder’s a funny business” and thanks to a cast that combined stage experience and fresh talent, Loveday’s production showed that murder can be a truly hilarious business.  

The show ran from 12th-14th February in the Vivian Cox Theatre and had been rehearsed in just five weeks. It was remarkable, therefore that the cast had their lines not just word-perfect but had absorbed them so confidently that they avoided the potential death-traps of the comic names: Guest the butler, Butler the guest, Gardner the cook, Cook the Gardner and another butler called Shofer.

 

The mixture of experience and new talent was seen in the lead double-act, for this was not a production in which Nick Barnes’s Inspector stole the show but rather the dead-pan foil of Matthew Boal’s Sergeant Plod (“Next to him I’m like an imbecile”) balanced Nick’s winning charisma superbly. Some of Matthew’s facial expressions were as classic as the comedy greats of TV fame; as was his accent when he revealed himself to be Mr Truck van Rental.

The rest of the cast were led by the strong stage presence of Piers English as Mr Gagarin (whom the Inspector called every comic name one could imagine beginning with g, including ‘Gonad’); he relished the comedy of his regular support for Policemen’s balls simply by playing it as straight as possible; the only corpsing on stage was done by Kate Heinrich as the supposed murder victim. Dan Rozwadowski played the open-mouthed simpleton gardner and Seren Waters added the splendidly named Chief Inspector Bastard to his hunch-backed butler (“I had a hunch he’d show up”). The joke was that after the butler had done it in every one of Drake’s ninety-odd previous murder investigations, this time everyone except the butler had done it (or thought they had).

 

Visual humour was supplied by Jack Barrett’s animated mime and gags such as the lie detector on a repeatedly collapsing table: “You’ll never make it stand up in court.” All the action was directed with great imagination by VIth Formers Ian Sekalala and Jack Church, who had been given, it seemed just the right mixture of supervision, inspiration and freedom by Loveday tutor Alex Forsdike. He, along with Ian, Jack and Nick were awarded their House ties on stage after the last night by proud Housemaster Chris Staley who paid tribute to the huge efforts back-stage of Paul Leggitt (props) and the several staff and pupils in the technical crew.   A fellow audience member told me “I genuinely laughed until it hurt.” Judging by the gales of sound on the Thursday, she was not the only one.