REVIEW: Burgess Hill Theatre Club breathes life into murder mystery

It was May 1960 when Detective Sgt Penny and Inspector Colquhoun first started looking for clues to a murder in Burgess Hill.

In those pre-Beatles days admission to Burgess Hill Theatre Club’s Agatha Christie thriller The Hollow was four bob and the cast performed at the Park Centre in Park Road, a temporary home.

Nearly 56 years later the corpse of the old murder mystery had fresh life breathed into it by an excellent cast of sleuths and deceivers.

Skilful stagecraft kept those in the audience at the little Burgess Hill Theatre who did not know the outcome guessing. The whole cast expertly trawled red herrings for the audience, who were invited at the interval to guess ‘whodunnit’ in a draw and win a bottle of bubbly.

Even for those who did know the outcome it was an absorbing evening because of some splendid characterisation.

Come to think of it, people had started disappearing long before the play got to Burgess Hill.