One good thing to come out of lockdown is that a great number of theatre productions are now available for free on YouTube. The Minack Theatre is a stunning open-air amphitheatre located in Cornwall which has incredible sea views. Given that I haven’t had the privilege of watching a performance there live, seeing a pre-recorded play online, free of charge, didn’t sound like a bad alternative to me.
The premise of Bill Scott’s The Case of the Frightened Lady is that Edgar Wallace, a prolific and highly successful crime writer, has just twelve hours remaining to hand the finished manuscript for his latest novel over to his publisher. There’s only a minor hitch…. Wallace hasn’t written a single word of his new whodunit yet. As a result, he ropes in the help of his wife, butler, gardener, and new secretary to get his creative juices flowing, act out potential scenes, and transcribe the results.
Tom Adams, Jo Bowis, Benjamin Dyson, Rosie Hughes, and Dominic Power are a wonderful and dynamic cast. They seamlessly morph from playing wealthy homeowners to gruff monosyllabic groundsmen, and detective sergeants to bumbling butlers. The script is littered with great one-liners and all props are fully utilised; lamps are transforming into microphones, potted plants are whisked by to establish a change of setting, and curtains are torn down and repurposed into fetching attire for a well-travelled doctor. With Mr Wallace (Benjamin Dyson) in the driving seat (often literally!), he attempts to direct the charade and is not afraid to interject when he doesn’t like the trajectory of the action ('enough with the owl noises!'). As the play progresses, household tensions increasingly spill over into the action, to great comedic effect.
My only real complaint is that the audio was a bit hard to hear at times (understandable given that the actors are literally performing on a cliff and have to jostle with the elements). I was grateful to be watching from the comfort of my own home, safe from the blustering wind (need I mention that sitting in the stone auditorium for two hours can’t be the most pleasant experience!). By the end of the play, the actors were shrouded in darkness which wasn’t a huge issue after the artificial lighting kicked in. Whilst the play’s concept isn’t anything revolutionary, it guarantees a couple of hours of pleasant entertainment (as evidenced by the fact that my dad could hear me and my mum laughing from upstairs). As the performance was slightly predictable and this wouldn’t be my preference of genre, I would rate The Case of the Frightened Lady 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Link to performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neDlYHOnEUg
Sidenote on Edgar Wallace to provide some context (slightly embarrassingly, I had never heard of him before watching this play): Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) was an incredibly prolific writer and journalist. He wrote poetry, historical non-fiction, 18 stage plays, 957 short stories, and over 170 novels (12 in 1929 alone!). Wallace narrated his works onto wax cylinders for his secretaries to type up. Many of Wallace's successful books were dictated like this over two or three days. He would often work pretty much uninterrupted in 72 hours (!). He rarely edited his work and often sent it straight to the publishers unedited. The Case of the Frightened Lady was a play written by Wallace in 1931.
My favourite line in "The Case of the Frightened Lady" was when Edgar turns to the his butler, whilst they are play acting as policemen in a car. He has already said "Steady on" or something similar about his "driving" and then asks "Have you even got a driving licence?". Very funny.