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The Review - THEATRE by HANNAH HUDSON
Published: 26 March 2009

Case for court comedy proven

THE MURDER GAME
King’s Head Theatre

THERE are more innately hilarious places than a New Orleans criminal courthouse.
Nevertheless, James Farwell’s The Murder Game successfully transforms a Judge Judy set into something appropriately amusing.
Katherine Kelly (Josefina Gabrielle) is the unlucky Louisiana judge whose District Attorney husband (Michael Praed) has left her for “a blonde with big boom booms” named Zizzi. She also has a disgruntled defendant trying to kill her.
As she toys with the would-be killer’s disarmed bomb, she contemplates how she can get back at her husband without resorting to divorce – “I’m a Catholic after all”. A joking suggestion from her British confidante, Melvin (Patrick Clancy), leads to her hiring a hitman – not to kill her husband but to scare him. It’s just a shame Randall has had the same idea.
This delicious satire melds fiction with genuine legal principles. The doctrine of flagrant necessity called into play by Katherine “renders lawful an otherwise illegal act, as an assault to remove a man from impending danger”. In other words, a Louisiana judge is within her rights to contract a hitman for a job on her District Attorney.
At times, the production feels like a string of one-liners, with Katherine’s aphorisms on marriage and Melvin’s endless innuendoes. But video interludes add depth and context to the plot, and the dialogue is as quick and witty as it would be in the courtroom.
John Tillinger’s production has terrific performances, particularly from Gabrielle and
Praed. Gabrielle’s
judge looks like a Deep South Nigella and
argues like Hilary Clinton.
In his turn, Praed’s Bill Clinton-esque tones provide a fitting counterbalance.
Katherine’s crime-writing Brazilian lover, Pito (Ben Jones), “a passionate student of PD James”, provides many of the show’s real laugh-out-loud lines, and Emmerdale star Matt Healey is unrecognisable as the “tax-paying assassin” Clyde.
What motivates a man to murder is never answered, although Pito’s suggestion that murder is “just divorce – Brazilian style” goes some way towards it.
Katherine opens the play with the lines “taking a shot at a judge is a risky business”.
Happily, Farwell’s shot at a courthouse comedy hits the mark.

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