Death of a Hollow Man

Barnaby volunteers his time to the local amateur dramatic society because Joyce has been cast in a revival of Amadeus, and he is too good a husband to leave her to it alone. It seems harmless enough, the sort of favour that costs him a few evenings and a lot of patience. Then the leading man is murdered on stage, in front of the audience, and the village drama becomes rather more literal than anyone signed up for. The audience gets considerably more than it paid for.

The investigation is a treat for anyone who enjoys their murder with a bit of theatrical flavour. The company of players closes ranks with the instincts of a cast protecting a run, and Barnaby has to separate the stage jealousy from the real thing. There is no shortage of motive: amateurs take their drama seriously, and someone took it seriously enough to kill. Killing the leading man mid-performance is the boldest bit of staging the society has ever attempted, and the clues sit among the props and the rehearsals, a reminder that the murder was always part of the performance.

Caroline Graham and Peter Shaffer wrote it, Jeremy Silberston directed. John Nettles is Barnaby, Daniel Casey his Sergeant Troy, and Jane Wymark gets a proper turn as Joyce, with Laura Howard's Cully close by. The company includes Denyse Alexander's Agnes Gray, Janine Duvitski's Deirdre Tibbs, Ian Fitzgibbon's David Smy, Geoffrey Hutchings' Colin Smy and Bernard Hepton's Harold Winstanley, with Barry Jackson's Dr Bullard on the coroner's side of things.

It is a pleasure to watch Barnaby apply his methodical ways to a group of people whose business is pretending. Everyone on that stage knows how to give a performance, and the killer is simply the one who kept acting after the curtain came down. And if the show ever wanted proof that the theatre brings out the worst in people, it found it here.