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Crimes, Camera, Action!
Comedy and Mystery in theatre perfection
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Frome’s very own New Old Friends are back again with another hilarious murder mystery. The multi-award winning company were last seen at the Merlin in autumn 2021, with Crimes in Egypt, and now return with their critically acclaimed film-noir inspired piece: Crimes, Camera, Action. The show originally premiered in Bath’s Theatre Royal
Main House last summer and is now remounted in Frome ahead of a large national tour.
Previous instalments in the ‘Crimes…’ series have been loosely based upon the cosy crime world of Agatha Christie, but this fast-paced romp whisks the audience away to golden-era Hollywood. It takes the novels of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, brought to life so memorably on screen by Humphrey Bogart, as its starting point. The world-weary private eye in this case is Stan Shakespeare, initially hired by a screen starlet to look into her shady producer. Stan ends up embroiled in the mystery surrounding her death, which was captured on camera.
If you’ve seen New Old Friends before, you’ll be familiar with their particular brand of overtly theatrical entertainment; the cast of just four exceptional comic actors play multiple parts. In this instance, we have: Stan Shakespeare the detective, a handful of screen ingénues, a lovelorn props master, a headstrong director, a transatlantic aristocratic apprentice, a trio of henchmen, teamsters galore, showgirls, robots, cowboys and, of course, a shady producer or two. They achieve this cornucopia of characters with lightning-fast changes (sometimes before your very eyes) and a liberal dose of theatre magic.
“crammed to the gills with knife-sharp visual gags and murderously bad
puns...” The Financial Times The company is run by Frome residents and married couple Heather Westwell and Feargus Woods Dunlop. Heather performed in the original run of the show while over seven months pregnant, but with their first child now happily present, the couple are settling for directing and producing the tour. When The List spoke with Heather, she had this to say about the show: “Crimes, Camera, Action is such a special show for us. It is the show we were performing when the first lockdown hit, before we even made it to our official opening. And it was the first full production we mounted when the theatres reopened. This is our third attempt to tour it, and we are so excited to share it with audiences up and down the country, starting with our home crowd here in Frome!”
The British Theatre Guide
We asked if she has a favourite moment in the show: “There are so many, starting with the opening credits right at the start, a full-on action sequence with slowmotion gunshots, but my favourite is probably the tongue-twisty linguistically ridiculous scene involving the three henchmen: Eye, Hey and Watt. You can probably guess where that goes, but it is so much fun getting there.”
New Old Friends formed in 2008, and have established a national reputation with their consistently inventive and imaginative staging, toweringly high gag rate and commitment to audience-centric entertainment. We are lucky to have such a company here in Frome, so get out there and support live theatre at the Merlin, which rigorously adheres to all Covid-security measures.
Crimes, Camera, Action is on at: Frome Merlin February 11th and 12th 7.30pm, with a 2.30pm matinee on Saturday 12th. Tickets are available from merlintheatre.co.uk
