Night Must Fall

Set in Essex , a homicidal young man called Dan has killed a woman where he works. Then when he gets a job as a kind of house boy at the house where his girlfriend is employed , he befriends the elderly lady who owns the place. It is made quite clear from the start that he intends to make the elderly woman his next victim.

Jason Donovan, who plays Dan, has received a lot of criticism from the critics about his accent. The character is supposed to be Welsh, but most critics believed Donovan was speaking Welsh one minute and Irish another. I think Donovan must have been working on this because I thought his accent was Ok, accept for the odd lapse into the Irish accent, but this did not happen very often. I thought he performed the part very well and I found him convincing.

The star performance though is by the experienced Rosemary Leach. She played the part of Mrs Bramson, the elderly lady, quite superbly. She captured the characters whines , groans and bad temper extremely well .

Reading reviews before going to see a show is a strange business. I think I enjoyed this play more than I thought I would because I was expecting something quite bad. My hopes were not high, therefore it didn't take much to please me. Whereas when I read how great a show is, I'm sometimes disappointed because it didn't quite live up to the expectations.

The applause from the near empty theatre was lacklustre at the end, most did not seem to like the play. I think I'm on my own on this one!

(Darren Dalglish)