1998: Prime Suspect by Duncan Ley

Prime Suspect by Duncan Ley.  Canvas Sky Productions directed by Liz Bradley. Currong Theatre, Gorman House, March 25 till April 4, 1998.

    My mother read Agatha Christie novels ad nauseam, so at a very young age my mental solution became thoroughly saturated with the murder mystery genre.

    Early childhood experience, however, did not innoculate me against Shakespeare.  It was never a question of, Who killed Hamlet?  but how to understand the complex of relationships which led Laertes to do the dishonorable deed, and how to come to terms with the tragedies which we all play out in real life.

    Agatha Christie's stories were, of course, never to be confused with reality.  They were intellectual games on a par with my child prodigy career in chinese checkers.  I failed at chess, but that was probably because Shakespeare got to me first.

    Prime Suspect, says the program, "was written primarily as a personal writing exercise" and "the primary role of the thriller is to entertain".  I was satisfied neither at the Miss Marples nor the Hamlet ends of the thriller continuum. 

    The Catch-22 situation (if Jonathon is mad he will be certified; if not he will be tried for murder - and incarcerated for life either way) had the potential for an Iago-Othello head-to-head, but the characters' motivations are simply insubstantial.  And the revelation of the murderer in the final scene, however true to the evidence, made me feel as though I had been taken for a long walk down the garden path.  This wasn't intellectual fun - not the promised entertainment - that a real thriller should be.

    Duncan Ley played Jonathon well, within the limits he set for the role.  Ian Carcary seemed unsettled as the criminal psychiatrist Dr Banks - but perhaps this was an attempt to prefigure the play's climactic revelation.  Production quality - sets, costumes, sound - was excellent, especially considering the lack of funding.  And Phil O'Brien's ABC newsreader voice-overs were spot on.
   
    In the end the most original part of the show is The Daily Programme, with its headline Newtown Stunned: The year's most shocking murder.  Excitement was promised, but my prime suspect is the author who really has given us a personal writing exercise.

© Frank McKone, Canberra