6 April 2025
Pundits frequently talk of football being a game of two halves, where after a goalless uninspired first half, players are castigated in the dressing room at half time and come back on the pitch inspired and motivated to score a stunning victory. Well, this ambitious new musical, based on the 1950s Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthology TV series of 30-minute episodes of dramas, thrillers and mysteries, is the theatrical equivalent.
How many times have you left a play or musical after a pedestrian first act convinced that it’s not worth anymore of your time? I know I have. Quite a few customers failed to return to the half empty stalls at Bath’s Theatre Royal at yesterday’s matinee but I’m pleased I did, because they missed a second act that is an absolute zinger! It suddenly fires to life and grabs you by the throat and (finally) delivers a knockout punch with clever punchlines. If only the opening of the show was as good you’d be reading about at a 4★ or even 5★ triumph and a West End transfer in the bag. It’s as if the book writer Jay Dyer and composer Steven Lutvak ( the Tony-winning composer of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, who died in 2023) – not the actors, who are mostly West End stars and all deliver 100% committed performances – were on the receiving end of one of Alex Fergusson’s infamous hairdryer dressings down in the Manchester United dressing room. Whatever happened during the creative process, they deliver a stunning second half. It might only be 45 minutes long, but it had me laughing out loud and beaming with joy. It really delivers.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Musical certainly looks stylish and classy (terrific black and white and grey tonal costumes designs by the ever brilliant Jonathan Lipman) but it is not remotely suspenseful. To be frank, the killer payoffs in the original TV series, which aired on CBS and NBC TV in the US between 1955 and 1965, were frequently a damp squib. Then you could blame the censorship of the era – US TV channels were family friendly at all hours. But here the tone with this musical adaptation is comedy deaths producing wry laughter rather than blood-curdling chills.
The book takes as its starting point just eight of the 268 episodes, featuring a paranoid housewife, a duplicitous jazz singer, a witness to murder, an escaped convict and a man literally on the edge. But it does include arguably the most famous, Lamb to the Slaughter, when a jilted housewife murders her husband with a frozen leg of lamb and then cooks it and feeds the evidence of the murder weapon to an investigating cop, literally getting away with murder.
Directed by the legendary John Doyle, the master of actor-muso musicals (Tony Award winner for Sweeney Todd, Company, The Color Purple), it plays out on a bustling TV studio set (the stage is framed as a 50s television), complete with oversized spotlights and an enormous period camera which glides across a monochrome set made up of free standing doors on casters and giant ladders, all co-designed by Doyle and David L Arsenault. The cast move these bulky items to switch and set the fast-moving scenes. Years ago that would have led to treasured and lucrative “push and pull” payments on top of their weekly salary. Sadly they are no more.
There is not a weak link in the gold standard cast, with Nicola Hughes returning to Bath after her scene-stealing turn as The Witch in Terry Gilliam’s production of Into the Woods (that stunning production holds the record for a 12-truck load-in at the Theatre Royal) as Eve, a disgruntled lover seeking revenge; hunky Alistair Brammer and Matthew Caputo are a gleeful pair of gay lovers plotting murder by Rope; Scarlett Strallen hits ridiculous high notes as Mary, the jilted wife wielding the deadly leg of lamb; Sally Ann Triplett – complete with Nora Batty rumpled stockings – is terrific as Sadie Grimes, a mother revenging her hoodlum son’s death with a deadly glass of lemonade; but best of all, for my money, is Joaquin Pedro Valdes, as both Dietz, a womanising cop getting his just deserts, and also Mrs Grimes son, Michael. His hyperactive energy completely invigorates the production at the start of act 2 when he appears first as a giant, faintly menacing silhouette, then leaps across the stage like a gazelle as he recounts a robbery that went terribly wrong. If only act one had had such peaks.
At a time when producers try to guarantee box office success by adapating musicals ripped off successful movies, this sort of adventurous, highly original musical theatre should be applauded. Such a sophisticated and innovative production is a rare gem indeed, but i can’t help but think that it would have benefited from a much more low key try out in The Large at Southwark Playhouse, away from the harsh glare of the national critics. Of course, you wouldn’t have a hope in hell of this level of star casting there! But I do recommend a visit to the beautiful Theatre Royal Bath – itself an architectural gem – before the show concludes its run next week.
