The world premiere of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is showing at The Watermill, Marlborough’s nearest theatre. Based on Kate Summerscale’s 2008 award winning book with the same title, it has been adapted for the stage by Alexandra Wood. Depicting the gruesome murder of three-year-old Francis Saville at Road Hill House, Wiltshire in July 1860 and the public outcry that followed, the play and book focus on Inspector Jonathan Whicher and Saville’s half-sister, Constance, who when the play opens is in prison. Just six actors and the set, lighting and music create a suitably bleak and tense atmosphere.
The play opens in Fulham Prison in 1881, some 21 years after the murder, where Constance (Eleanor Wyld) is visited by Inspector Whicher (Christopher Naylor). The audience is introduced to the events leading to this moment with what appears to be a series of either flashbacks or Constance’s memories – her father’s affair with the family’s nanny while his own wife, Constance’s mother, is dying, the close sibling relationship between Constance and William who plan to run away to sea as cabin boys. This has been a case that has destroyed Inspector Whicher’s career and Naylor portrays him as a broken, frustrated man whose reputation is in tatters.
A Dickensian fog pervades the set creating a gothic atmosphere which is enhanced by the discordant music, back projection of spidery writing depicting the family tree and the ghostly appearances on the balcony of the murdered child.
The clever structure of the play, forces the audience, even those who may know the outcome of this famous crime, to contemplate what will happen, particularly at a time when the death penalty was the common response to murder. The short, succinct two act structure increases the tension and leads to a chilling conclusion.
The Road Hill House murder has all the ingredients of what was to become the detective genre popularised first by Wilkie Collins and Dickens, who used details from this case in their work and who are referred to in this play. The Road Hill House murder possesses all the key features that we have come to recognise – the shrewd, loner detective with a troubled past, a closed circle of suspects, often in a country house setting, who all have something to hide.
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is running at The Watermill, near Newbury until Saturday June 10. Click here to book tickets.