REVIEW: PRINCE/DAVID Golden Goose Theatre until 6 July 2024

‘A thriller which effortlessly spans decades, and highlights changing attitudes in the police force to crimes against women’ ★★★★

Psychologists may tell us that repeated behaviour, present in most human beings is often due to an unresolved childhood trauma. In some this leads to addictions, in many only habits but in a few, something much more serious. In very few and surprisingly rare cases it leads to murder.

Although many TV crime programs concentrate on murder and murderers, it might surprise you to know how rare murder in fact is. Maybe that rare occurrence is what makes these events more shocking to us when they happen and are made known to us. This story is based on such an event. And this play throws us right in at the deep end from the start by exposing us to an opening scene moments before the crime. Although it covers a period of 25 years it whisks us at lightning speed through events, given to us in short bursts somewhat like a group of TV episodes; the whole thing having the feel of a screen crime drama, punctuated with back projections.

The staging was good and the pace fast so that by the interval I was amazed at how much ground had been covered in less than an hour. Yasir Senna’s depiction of the murderer David Nicholls was of a very friendly and funny guy. So much so that early in the play you could easily have been forgiven for thinking you were watching a comedy. But the comic absurdity of the character, imagine something between a game-show host and a clown, was carried on throughout the play. Later in the play while talking to the police his manner hadn’t changed but now, having been exposed to his dealings, we see a remorseless David in a sinister and more sobering light; the result of excellent directing and acting choices. 

Helen Matthews as PC and DC Stecklen and Christopher Poke as both DC Harewood and DCI Morgan hold the play together on stage very well and with Natasha Vassell as DC Allen and Commissioner Barkley give us characters who span the 25 years of the story. Ben Gad-Briggs as the waiter startlingly gives us a clue in the first scene that things are not quite as they should be. He appears later as Michael. Nabhan Uddin as DC Younis explodes with rage at his frustration with the ineptitude of the investigation against David Nicholls.  Richard Houghton-Evans is more than adequate as the TV presenter and DC Dennis, Barbara Dunin as DC Hirani and Helena Heaven as DC Levy complete the cast.

A topic well displayed in the play is the attitude of senior police officers and the press in the investigation of crimes against women. Hopefully all left behind now back in the 1990s. For such a sensitive subject this play does very well: it sticks to the story, moves at a tempo that strides over years of unnecessary information without leaving the audience lost as to where we are, shows topical issues, prods and points at mistakes and inappropriate attitudes of the professionals concerned and is entertaining.

PRINCE/DAVID Golden Goose Theatre 26 June - 6 July 2024

Written and directed by Yasir Senna

A Razor Sharp Production

Box Office https://www.goldengoosetheatre.co.uk/whatson/prince%2Fdavid-

Reviewed by Robert McLanachan