There's something quietly bold about opening a musical with a question that history never quite answered. Entertaining Murder doesn't rush to resolve it either. It sits in the discomfort and lets you do the work. And that's where it finds its voice. Set against the real-life case of Edith Thompson, this musical leans into the tension between fact and feeling. Love, obsession and perception. What we believe versus what we're told to believe. It's not just a whodunnit. It's a question of why we decide she did it.
At the centre is Daisy Snelson's Edith, and she carries the piece with a kind of fragile intensity that never tips into melodrama. There's a restraint to her performance that works in its favour. You don't always know what she's thinking, and that ambiguity becomes the point. She is, quite simply, a delight to behold. Dominic Sullivan brings a quiet depth to his role as Freddie Bywaters, grounded and believable, and he is beautifully matched by Sue Kelvin as Avis, with Dora Gee as the younger Avis adding a layered contrast that works seamlessly. One of my favourite moments came from the older Avis, who described the affair between Freddie and her sister as “wax in your hand, a mixture of poetic and gynaecological.” It's a line that could easily feel jarring, but here it lands with precision. Uncomfortable, clever, and oddly telling.
Chris Burgess has clearly taken time to dedicate himself fully to this piece. The writing is where this piece really sharpens. Being in the legal world myself, I found the nuance in the dialogue particularly striking. Nothing feels accidental. Every line feels considered, weighted, almost like evidence being placed carefully before a jury. The cast honour that. Each performance is delivered with empathy and sympathy, never slipping into caricature, which in a story like this would have been the easy option.
The venue itself does a lot of the heavy lifting. Upstairs at the Gatehouse is intimate in the way that elevates this kind of storytelling. You are not watching from a distance, you are in it. Close enough to catch the flicker of doubt, the hesitation, the unspoken. It creates an atmosphere that feels almost conspiratorial. Visually, the production is quietly magical. Richard Lambert's lighting works in harmony with Carla Joy Evans' costume design to create a world that feels both period and immediate.
It would have been easy to overplay the drama of such a notorious case, but instead it allows the tension to sit, to simmer, to unfold in its own time. This isn't a loud musical. It doesn't chase spectacle. It's more interested in the quiet dismantling of a narrative and the unsettling question of whether justice was ever really the aim.You leave not with answers, but with a feeling. And sometimes, that's stronger.
It runs until 10 May.
Review: Kay Johal