REVIEW: IT’S A MYSTERY at Bread and Roses Theatre 2 - 6 July 2024

‘Benzie’s fast on-stage costume changes, all from a suitcase, was reminiscent of the hilariously funny Tommy Cooper hat sketch.’ ★★★

Very few of us are lucky enough to turn a childhood dream into a job, to continue dreaming during adulthood and live a life that constantly reinvigorates that magical passion we were once so captivated by. With so many books and films and plays in the genre of murder mysteries Tim Benzie is still living that childhood dream.

This 70 minute performance is an encyclopedia of the “who done it”. From the possible ‘first ever’ by Edgar Allen Poe with his “The Murders in The Rue Morgue” we are taken through the ‘Golden Age of Detective Fiction” in the 1920s and 1930s with the works of Agatha Christy and Dorothy L Sayers.

Passing Raymond Chandler, Film Noir, Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett, Humphrey Bogart and dozens more names we were bombarded in an avalanche of writers, characters, detectives and titles that it was hard to keep up and keep track of what was going on. But it was fun. All the while trying to piece together a bunch of clues Tim gave to us at the start of his performance which moulded into our very own ‘who done it’ right there in the theatre that night.

In the blink of an eye we were onto the TV detectives, Poirot, Miss Marple and Columbo and so many more that I found myself trying to figure out who hadn’t been mentioned. (Ellery Queen?) Probably lots that Tim knows and that I don’t. Anyway, the audience was fast becoming aware that this man was little short of a genius or at least a walking lexicon of everything there is to know on the subject of murder mystery storytelling.

And when it came to storytelling, Tim Benzie was in good company. His fast on-stage costume changes, all from a suitcase placed on a downstage table was reminiscent of the hilariously funny Tommy Cooper hat sketch.

To round it all off we were allowed a brief view into a more personal side of a life that at first appeared to be all fun and games. Like the cliché of so many clowns that lay their souls bare in their brave battle to make the rest of us laugh, this one too had a sad side to his past. Nobody in the audience was ungrateful to hear this.

And finally, the answer to the mystery, and like the very best detective in every murder mystery, Tim made it all sound so obvious that we felt like we were blind not to have seen it all along.

IT’S A MYSTERY at Bread and Roses Theatre 2 - 6 July 2024

Written and performed by Tim Benzie

Directed by Sarah Chew

Box Office https://www.breadandrosestheatre.co.uk/whats-on.html

Reviewed by Robert McLanachan