None of Them Will Get Out Alive. Hens and Chickens Theatre.

Writer and director Samuel Winner delivers a version of TV’s The Traitors set within the familiar realm of detective fiction parody. None of Them Will Get Out Alive sees six loosely connected characters gather in a remote farm for no very persuasive reason, there to participate in a game about “truth, trust and sacrifice”. The plot, essentially a leaky kitchen colander with dialogue, requires them to vote every ten minutes or so on who most deserves to die.

The body count indeed stacks up. By the end, shot and stabbed cadavers litter the floor of the Hens and Chickens Theatre like extras in a particularly bloody Tarantino movie. The mockery is amiable enough stuff from a good-natured cast, but one cannot help wishing for a few more jokes to leaven the 45 minutes.

Bertie (Max Young) is a rich buffoon who still loves Georgia (Colette O’Brien gives her melodrama technique a good airing), even though she dumped him in “a Franco Manca over pizza and wine”. Bertie had sex with the mother of Anders (James Hardy) and Mary (Sofia Robbins), which is about as much of a motive for murder as you will find in the piece. Mathew (Jean-Paul Mark Schlom) is dying of a terminal illness and wants everybody to be honest “for once”. Knife-wielding Harriet (Sophie Ellis Rue), whose reason for being there never quite emerges from the fog, says, “Let’s get back our humanity”. At this point, Harriet, a workable script might take priority.

Spoofs of Poirot and Marple are ten a penny in fringe theatre. Winner exercises the various tropes – OTT characters, absurdly obvious clues, exposition overload, incongruously high stakes – without adding much that is new. He just about manages to navigate a surfeit of red herrings to deliver a big reveal of sorts at the end, which is about as much as one can hope for here.

Writer and Director:  Samuel Winner