Joseph Kesselring's macabre comedy kicks off a killer season at the Derby Playhouse (with Macbeth and a new Australian comedy, Serial Killers, to follow), and the body count is already impressively high. There are 12 corpses buried in the Brewster sisters' basement, or 13 if you count this bold attempt to breathe new life into a hoary old Broadway caper, which doesn't quite come off.
Mortimer Brewster is a drama critic who is appalled to discover that his maiden aunts have been bumping off their lodgers. Brother Teddy is under the illusion that he is President Roosevelt, while long-missing Jonathan is a malevolent ghoul who looks like Boris Karloff.
Joseph Alford's production looks rather like Peter Brook directing the Addams Family. As the founder of Theatre O, Alford applies a full range of European physical theatre techniques, and adds additional mystery to the piece by keeping the actors in view even when they are not participating in a scene.
But Kesselring's lunatic script really needs to be laugh-a-minute to succeed, whereas Alford's funereal approach induces a nervous titter every quarter of an hour. The intention may be to psychologise the characters as genuine human beings with deep reserves of emotional pain, but locating the method behind Kesselring's madness is ultimately no more productive than attempting to tease the screwball side out of Ibsen.
The actors work hard, though the murky lighting makes it very difficult to see them. Helen Blatch and Geraldine Newman deliver sweetly plausible performances as the biddies with a Borgian appetite for poison, while Oliver Senton is unfailingly hyperactive as the critic who saves time by writing his review on the way to theatre. Maybe, in certain instances, that's not such a bad idea.
· Until September 17. Box office: 01332 363275.
