Writer: Christopher Sainton-Clark
Director: Rosanna Mallinson
Christopher Sainton-Clark’s dark, brooding comedy-thriller The Night Ali Died delivers an engaging slice of Sunset Boulevard-style beyond-the-grave narration, revealing the events leading up to the murder of unambitious chemistry technician Ali.
Except it is not just dullard Ali (Sainton-Clark plays all the characters) who meets his untimely demise on a thoroughly blood-stained evening. A crooked detective, a malevolent mob boss, and a scheming small-time hitman all encounter variously gory ends. In fact, so much violence is committed on the streets of Norwich that it evokes bigger headlines in the local newspaper than, we are told, the recent rural Norfolk “Cousin Fucks Other Cousin” scandal.
Something of a fantasist and prone to odd fixations, Ali grows up dreaming of becoming a film star or a pop singer. But making it big requires luck, a gift the man noticeably lacks. Indeed, his most remarkable capacity is the ability to find himself meeting “the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time”. Unambitious and bullied at school, he drifts into a university Chemistry degree with his best friend, Tony. Now 28, he has a complaining (and unwanted) partner and a needy baby to look after, which partly explains why he and Tony are working as overqualified “lab bitches” in a local pharmaceutical company.
A complication arises when Ali finds out Tony is using his access to chemicals and lab gear to manufacture illicit MDMA for London drug kingpin Max. “This is going to look terrible for the company”, Ali muses, an indication that initially at least, his sympathies may lie with the wrong people.
Plot shenanigans see Ali follow his bestie to a drug drop-off at a local car park, with the aim of documenting Tony’s crimes. It is pretty much downhill from there, for all concerned. Ambitious, hoodie-clad hitman Jason and a seemingly psychopathic, gun-toting local detective, DCI Wiggins, join in for the ride.
Sainton-Clark delivers a neatly camouflaged twist in the tale ending and, in Ali at least, an empathetic central character who yearns to seize opportunities that, for one reason or another, will never come his way. If the other characters feel a little less fully drawn, that may be because the writer and director, Rosanna Mallinson, are packing an awful lot into a busy 55 minutes.
One yearns for a little more comedy to lighten events now and then, but Sainton-Clark has an immensely likeable stage presence, and there is much to enjoy in a piece that suggests Norwich may be an altogether edgier kind of town than one might otherwise suppose.
Runs until 10 May 2026 and then on UK tour.
