This is a play about a family of murderers (the ‘Tomb’ family – get it?) famed for their elaborate poisoning techniques who live in a large country house in the middle of nowhere, and have a nasty tendency to kill anyone who visits them. They have an altogether nonchalant attitude towards death, leading to the play being billed as a “comedy-thriller”; think, lots of inane discussion amounting to ‘who could the murderer be?!’ and it’s eventually revealed to be the last person you’d expect based upon highly tenuous links in the script.

The play’s main fault was taking itself too seriously. If you put on a play written by one of the most prolific panto writers around, you do it to make everything completely over the top to the point where ridiculousness breeds humour. This play should have been aimed at children. Hecuba Tomb, (Lesley Nelson) the grand-mummy of the family, should by all rights have been a panto dame, but this director instead turns her into a nagging, misanthropic harpy. Every time a murder appears on stage the back wall is illuminated by a brothel-red glow for a few seconds, as if to say ‘oh no, a crime has been committed!’ Unfortunately, the lighting designer’s efforts at bringing an element of the sinister to the murders goes to waste; the portrayals of ‘death’ onstage were just about as hilarious as awkward cringe-laughs from the audience could reflect. The play’s smoothness was not helped, either, by Nelson’s repeated forgetfulness, triggering little chirps from backstage followed by the louder echo onstage several seconds too late.

As much as I wanted to enjoy the show, the acting shortcomings of the ensemble were painfully evident. They each seemed to have studied at the ‘Say Your Line, Stand Back Awkwardly, and Wait until You Have to Say the Next One’ School of Drama, which everyone knows has fallen way down the league tables recently. This was nowhere more difficult to watch than during an offstage speech by one character, during which those still onstage stood around looking like they were waiting for the rapture. The cast just didn’t seem to know what to do with its limbs; all was very stunted and wooden. Certain actors raised the bar slightly; notably, Megan Stickler and Richard Betts’s scene in the second half began to approach what we’re more used to at the ADC. The director, however, simply did not take advantage of some of the script’s funniest lines. The uber-camp historian visitor, Quentin Danesworth, (Peter Coe) recalls when he lost a body piercing, blurting out “It turned up in Alistair’s... well I found it.” Except, no pause was left between the two clauses. No attempt at lengthening out the moment for humour was made. The entire production seemed rushed.

It did have some ameliorating factors. The atmosphere was quite effectively set at the play’s beginning by a dull rumble from the sound system and a dry ice machine onstage. The set design, additionally, was excellent; suitably combining elements of the Overlook Hotel with a sterile 1960s hospital waiting room. Clearly the production had benefitted from John Lewis’s furniture department, but to the designers’ credit, the play looked top notch.

However, picking a script where the events are about as predictable as an episode of Scooby Doo was always going to provide mediocre results, even if this had been a student production. I would go to see the JLCDG again next year, but more out of a perverse curiosity to see what they manage to improve, rather than in expectation of a memorable theatrical experience. Considering the cast and production team are drawn entirely from John Lewis staff, the show is remarkable, but something of this nature will always, unfortunately, pale in comparison with the competitive and selective world of Cambridge student drama. Don’t get me wrong, this play is a lot of fun, but I wish that was for the right reasons. I guess I won’t be going to John Lewis for a while.