Red Bus Londinium Life

The New Wimbledon Theatre is currently championing a season of brand new plays, including Hijinks and Caviar.

From the writing duo Moody & Moody, Hijinks and Caviar is billed as a comedy musical which will offer a night of murder mystery fun with a side helping of ridiculousness. This is an excellent premise and has the nuggets of a clever idea. I was anticipating a mash up of The Play That Goes Wrong plus Miss Marple set to music.

This is a genre ripe for silly fun (I recommend everyone try a Murder She Wrote Solve A Long one day, for example) and I feel audiences generally arrive ready to suspend belief and play along. However, in this iteration Hijinks and Caviar does not yet live up to what it promises.

Overall, the show is too long. The songs, while fun and well performed, are not always memorable and generally don’t drive forward the narrative which means a lot of speech is also required to explain the plot. Building some of this speech into the songs might help tighten and shorten the show.

The choreography is well-performed but it varies whether the characters stay in character or not, which adds to a lack of cohesion. As an audience, the plot thread often becomes confusing. I am still not sure why the dinner service was so quick?

Some jokes (“Hyde” being confused for “Hide!”) are over-used and further slow down the performance.

Richard Blackman was very entertaining as the hapless Pastor Verdi, but I felt his character could have been just as amusing without the addition of a speech impediment. Everyone enjoys a laugh but not cheap laughs poked at a disability.

Overall, the characters were given a lot of time – each sang at least one solo. However, none were ever truly explored and they remained slightly one dimensional. The funniest and most individual scene was when each exposed their relationship with Lady Mary – more of this would have improved their depth.

When the eventual culprit of the murder was revealed, it was extremely hurried and we were left with no sense of motive. One of the pleasures of a murder mystery is the “Ah ha!” when the murder is solved and this was not really delivered due to the speed of the exposure.

I have always believed that some of the best shows out there are those which come from small beginnings and improve along the way. Hijinks and Caviar has potential to become one of those shows, but is not quite there at this stage. I will watch with interest the next steps on its journey.

[Thank you to New Wimbledon theatre for the gifted tickets for an honest review].