DramaNorth East & YorkshireReview

Rebus: A Game Called Malice – York Theatre Royal

Reviewer: Jennie Eyres

Writers: Ian Rankin and Simon Reade

Imagine a generic whodunnit, set in the dining room of a grand property, where a detective of average looks, intelligence and interest manages to work out who murdered an unseen person in a random room of said property. This is essentially what Rebus: A Game Called Malice is. It is absolutely fine as a middle of the road example of this genre and would probably do the rounds with no problems at provincial theatres around the country, had it not been for two important elements.

Firstly, this is not supposed to be just any old whodunnit, this is a Rebus whodunnit. Rebus, a gritty, cynical, flawed detective who uncovers the seedy underbelly of Edinburgh time and again. Excellent, obsessive and gruff, with a wry sense of humour, he is the hero of Ian Rankin’s best-selling novels. The audience would be right to expect strong stuff – whisky drinking, maybe a spot of coarse language and some of the more obvious traits of one of the most enduring characters of crime fiction.

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Secondly, the play is written by Ian Rankin – THE Ian Rankin. Author of 25 Rebus novels and several short stories. This suggests that the play will be clever, maybe dark, possibly atmospheric but definitely littered with Rebus book references and excellent lines. Unfortunately, neither the main character nor the plot live up to the grand expectations that are naturally built up for it.

Performances of the cast are perfectly acceptable, with no particularly stand out executions or overly impressive character interpretations. They all do a relatively good job with the script they have, their characters are conveyed to an extent and the relationships between them all are fairly clear. Thirty nine of the forty minutes of the first half of the production were taken up with the set up of those relationships, with the entirely expected ‘there’s a murder’ coming with seconds of the first half to spare. This made the first act feel both short and long at the same time. The plot felt underdeveloped due to the brevity of the act, but the set up felt over long and a little awkward.

There were hopes, moving into the second act that the genre may somehow be turned on its head, that Rankin would have done something particularly clever to subvert it, or to show at the end that it was in fact Rebus who was pulling the strings all along, but unfortunately this was not the case. Instead the audience watched a perfectly acceptable, bland and somewhat predictable whodunnit come to its underwhelming conclusion.

This isn’t an offensive production in any way, it sits somewhere in the middle of all the productions that will be seen then largely forgotten about, and this is the real shame of it. It could have been, and should have been so much more.

Runs until 19th October 2024

The Reviews Hub Score

Perfectly average whodunnit

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The Reviews Hub - Yorkshire & North East

The Yorkshire & North East team is under the editorship of Jacob Bush. The Reviews Hub was set up in 2007. Our mission is to provide the most in-depth, nationwide arts coverage online.

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