THEATRE REVIEW: Looking Good Dead - The Lowry Theatre, Salford.

It was great to return to this long established and well respected venue after such a long hiatus caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The staff at The Lowry are always friendly, welcoming and helpful. It was good to see the COVID-19 protocols in force and the effort which has obviously gone in to making the theatre and all public areas as safe as possible.

'Looking Good Dead' is the latest in the line of theatrical versions of novels written by Peter James, all of which have featured his most iconic character, Superintendent Roy Grace, and set in modern day Brighton.

Adam Woodyatt and Gaynor Faye are in the central roles of Tom and Kellie Bryce, part of a middle class family who are unwittingly drawn into danger. Tom is a very hard working man whose company is in significant financial trouble; and Kellie, a mother of two late-teenaged sons, who, it becomes clear, has been an alcoholic in the past. Unsurprisingly, even before the Bryce family become embroiled in the subject of the story, the tension within their marriage is palpable and played out before us.

The action opens in a very unusual fashion – more of that, shortly – and then switches to the rather expensively designed house owned by Tom and Kellie. Tom explains to computer expert son Max (Luke Ward-Wilkinson) that he has found a memory stick on the train. Unfortunately, it is password protected but Max quickly cracks it. They watch an horrific live stream, which follows directly on from the opening scene, and this is shown to the audience.

Following that, we are introduced to the police detectives who are investigating what we have just seen: the aforementioned Roy Grace (Harry Long), Glenn Branson (Leon Stewart) and Bella Moy (Gemma Stroyan). I am deliberately not giving much of the plot away and instead will concentrate on the pros and cons of the production as I saw them.

The positives: I was very impressed with the superbly crafted and well engineered set, which allowed for extremely slick changes. A lot of credit must go to the designer and to the production team for delivering a fast moving show; the lighting was also excellent. For me, Max was the standout of this production, every inch the tech savvy and laid back teenager who runs rings around his doting parents; he is visibly stressed, though, by the strife he witnesses between his mum and dad. The character of Grace was solidly delivered and came across well. I also enjoyed the portrayal of Jonas Kent (Ian Houghton), a typically cocky American who strikes a lucrative and potentially business-saving deal with Tom.

The negatives: there were major sound issues with background effects simply being too loud at times. Conversely, some of the cast were too quiet on occasion and as none had any amplification, a fair amount of their dialogue was inaudible or muffled. I sat in the middle of the stalls, so it's hard to know what people who were further back, or in the circle, made of the piece if they were, like me, unable to hear the lines! Unquestionably, this is my pet hate when going to the theatre and I didn't expect to be criticising this aspect of a professional touring production.

Sadly, there was not also not enough believable chemistry between Tom and Kellie. Additionally, the one-line jokes uttered by Glenn Branson in the police station scenes fell very flat and added nothing to the plot. Fortunately, the multi-layered script was good and generally easy to understand. It can be difficult to condense several hundred pages in a book into a two hour play. In overall terms, the writer is to be commended for creating a good evening's entertainment for lovers of crime fiction.

 'Looking Good Dead' runs nightly until Saturday the 22nd, starting at 7:30pm.

Reviewer - David Swift
on - 18.1.22