Murder At Midnight – The Lowry, Salford

Writer: Torben Betts

Director: Philip Franks 

Murder at Midnight fails to live up to its title of ‘comedy thriller’ by a long shot. With jokes which could come out of a Christmas cracker, and one-dimensional characters which show no development throughout the production. Its clumsy plot revelations are less ‘twist and turn’ and more ‘drop and deflate’.

It’s New Year’s Eve, and before the new year arrives there will be hell to pay. Jonny “The Cyclops” Drinkwater is a drug lord whose girlfriend and elderly mother are shrouded in mystery. An undercover policeman, Paul, is sent in to uncover what secrets the family might be hiding. But a New Year’s party gone wrong means caretaker, Cristina, and loose cannon, Russell, are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

One of the show’s major failings is its one-dimensional characters. For example, Lisa, Jonny’s girlfriend, is little more than a carrot on a stick for both Jonny and Paul. With a gratingly fake drawling accent, Lisa is a caricature bimbo, to the point where it borders on sexist. Dressed in mini dresses or alluring nightwear, the characters’ only concerns are looking good, sex, and jewellery, and the character frequently utters a variation of the line, “I can’t think.” You may be watching her in the first act and think they’re going to do something really great with her character which exceeds your expectations. Disappointingly, nothing changes, and it is a grandly missed opportunity to make more out of the woman whose greatest wish is to be loved for who she is and to be taken seriously. But as soon as a diamond is thrown in the mix, she can’t decide what she wants.

This is a common occurrence in the play; there’s a hint of a setup in the first act by selling you clear character archetypes, but then nothing is done with these setups, and the character continues to be one-dimensional throughout. Another example is Cristina, a Romanian nurse who is sending money back to her sick father at home, who accidentally gets involved in a criminal underworld. Not only is there no comedic twist on this, but we also gather no further information about her character. Except for the fact that she is a doorway for another character to become involved in the plot, Cristina has no effect on the story. Another character even pokes fun at her for ‘needing her papers’ and slow talking to her like she can’t understand a word of English, both of which are patronising jokes which are in poor taste.

Several characters give a monologue to an invisible mirror in the bedroom, which introduces the second largest flaw in the production: every character blurts out their inner-most thoughts both when they think no one is there and while everyone is in the room with them. Nothing is artfully revealed because the characters confess to what they’re about to do next or how they truly feel without being provoked. Every character has a tragic backstory, but you can’t infer it from their actions or how they interact with others. Instead, they simply blurt out, “My parents used to put me down, and that’s why I am like I am”, devoid of any mystery and then never spoken about again.

Other practical problems drag the play down. For a thriller which has the word ‘murder’ in its title, there is only one convincing act of violence in the whole production. Other acts of violence happen out of view of the audience, which makes you feel a bit cheated since a thriller is what the audience comes for.

The comedy is inconsistent at best. One moment the production takes itself incredibly seriously as a thriller, and the next, it decides it is a comedy again. There are clear differences between the thriller and comedy moments, and the two never blend or meet in the middle. The audience is either supposed to believe this is a high-drama, dangerous situation—where a girl has just been told to call her parents for the last time because it is the last chance she’ll ever get—and then go to comedy to the calibre of “Call me an ambulance”, to the response, “You’re an ambulance”.

All in all, the show needs major restructuring to become a coherent crime thriller, and as for comedy, though patchy, a few moments get the audience laughing. Some audience members may enjoy this show, but it isn’t for everyone.

Runs until 23 January 2026