THEATRE: Robert Greig
MURDER mystery plays are as addictive as syllogisms. The characters may not make sense, the situations may be predictable and conventional, but one is impelled by the remorseless logic of discovery. Hamlet is probably the best example of this.
Murder in Green Meadows, playing at the Richard Haines Theatre in Johannesburg, is of the American sub-species, where nervous tension is in at the beginning — compared to the slow accumulation of tension in the English genre. The characters are, if not urban, at least suburban: an architect, played by Michael de Pinna, dark and saturnine and therefore looking as though he has a hidden secret; his frail, nervy wife, played by Jo da Silva; and the neighbours, clean-cut, nice people, played by Kevin Otto and Claire Wrogeman.
Murder in Green Meadows seems set in John Updike country, a land where couples have affairs and constantly teeter on the brink of cataclysmic emotions. The difference here is degree: they don’t teeter, but fall.
The play works smoothly and logically and, in Maralin Vanrenen’s direction, edgily. It’s a witty, adept play and production, albeit constrained by a postage- sized stage. It seemed, for example, that De Pinna’s performance was not entirely calibrated to the stage: it came across as overly forceful.