Murder mystery season set to thrill in Nottingham

Published: 26 July 2014
Reporter: Steve Orme

The Ghost Train, the first play in the Classic Thriller Season Credit: Simon Cooper

Four weeks of murder, mystery and mayhem are in store at Nottingham’s Theatre Royal with the return of the Classic Thriller Season.

The annual Colin McIntyre Classic Thriller Season was taken over by TABS Productions from South Wingfield, Derbyshire after the death of McIntyre in 2011. This is the 26th season.

Formed in 1989 by Adrian Lloyd-James and Karen Henson, TABS has kept to the usual format of staging four different plays in four weeks.

Arnold Ridley’s The Ghost Train will thunder into the Theatre Royal from Monday until Saturday (28 July until 2 August). It will be directed by thriller season stalwart Nicholas Briggs.

The second week will take a bizarre twist as a theatre group performs The Ghost Train in Shadow of the Ghost. As they present their version, the Lemon Tree Players soon realise that they are wrapped up in a murder mystery to rival that of any fictitious plot.

Shadow of the Ghost was written by Arnold Ridley’s son Nicolas and Chris Ponka. It runs at the Theatre Royal from 4 until 9 August.

Francis Durbridge is always a popular choice for the thriller season and his play Fatal Encounter is the third offering, running from 11 until 16 August.

The month comes to a “grisly” end with Brian Clemens’s Murder Weapon. At first the murder of Paul Tulliver appears to be an open-and-shut case. But as the police investigate it becomes apparent that all is not as it seems. Murder Weapon runs from 18 until 23 August.

*Some links, including Amazon, Stageplays.com, ATG Tickets, LOVEtheatre, BTG Tickets, Ticketmaster, The Ticket Factory, LW Theatres and QuayTickets, are affiliate links for which BTG may earn a small fee at no extra cost to the purchaser.

Are you sure?