Review: MURDER AT MIDNIGHT at The Churchill Theatre

Date: 26th November 2025

Stars: 3

There’s a particular kind of theatre trip where you sit down, look at the title Murder at Midnight, and think you know exactly what’s coming. Sharp twists. Breathless tension. A sense that someone will start monologuing about motives. What you actually get here is something far stranger: a play that’s drenched in violence but delivered with the shrugging energy of people who’ve had a very long year and are simply trying to get through another night without anyone bleeding on the sofa.

Torben Betts sets the story in a quiet Kent home on New Year’s Eve, though the date barely matters — it’s less a celebration and more a reminder that these characters are stuck in patterns they probably won’t break by January. The script throws guns, drugs and knives into the mix, but the tone sits somewhere between weary domestic comedy and crime-scene confusion. Every now and then it feels like the play’s gearing up for something explosive, only to wander off into another awkward conversation instead.

The cast handle this oddness with admirable dedication. Jason Durr plays Jonny “The Cyclops” like a man who’s exhausted by his own reputation, and Max Bowden gives the chaos some grounding, finding beats of humour or tension in moments that could easily drift. And then there’s Susie Blake, who doesn’t so much steal scenes as outright pocket them. She lands the best jokes with the ease of someone who has absolutely earned them, and she injects a welcome sense of clarity just when the show most needs it.

The pacing is undeniably loose. Some scenes feel as though they’re waiting for permission to end, and others suddenly jolt forward without quite earning the shift. It’s not boring — there’s always something happening, someone panicking, someone messing something up — but the momentum doesn’t fully build in the way the subject matter suggests it could.

Yet there’s an odd charm in the unevenness. The play tries. You can feel that. It reaches for something between satire and sincerity, and even when it doesn’t quite get there, the effort gives the night a curious appeal. The violence never lands as frightening, the jokes don’t always spark, but the performers commit so fully that you end up going along with it anyway.

Murder at Midnight isn’t the thriller you expect, nor the comedy it sometimes wants to be. It sits in its own strange space — messy, occasionally funny, peppered with sharp little moments that hint at a tighter show underneath. And while it doesn’t quite pull everything together, the cast (especially Blake) make sure you never completely check out.

Murder at Midnight is currently touring, and more information can be found here: https://www.murderplay.com/