INSPECTOR MORSE - HOUSE OF GHOSTS- AT THE ARTS THEATRE

‘Everyone loves Morse’ beamed one audience member as she left last night’s performance – the very first to put the legendary Oxford intellectual Police Inspector on  stage. In film form, author Colin Dexter has conquered the world – and from 1987 John Thaw and Kevin Whately made Morse major viewing.  But how would the legend survive the the actual theatre version? Would the Magic of Morse make it to match the global success of TV ?

Director Anthony Banks went all out for a really theatrical solution. , the exceptional play by Alma Cullen which puts the theatre and its enclosed claustrophobic world at the centre of the action.

We begin in a restless theatre as Hamlet gives his major speech ‘To be or not to be’ interrupted by a worrying heckler (from our audience – part of the plot!). Spin Glancy conveys a complex neurotic young Hamlet, on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The beauteous Ophelia is Rebecca, played with convincing skill by Eliza Teale. Full of reproach for her hopeless lover Hamlet she throws his flowers in his face. And collapses. It is an on-stage death in the play-within -a-play and we are tipped into familiar territory - the panic a sudden shock creates.. Chaos ensues, the House Lights ( in the Arts Theatre) go up, the unknown heckler vanishes and we hear the authoritative voice of Morse who commands us all to sit in our seats and not to leave.

Tom Chambers is a gorgeous Inspector M. He is tough, firm and at this point in 1987 at the beginning of his career (the TV show didn’t start until then) so a handsome lithe and wonderfully dressed younger version is quite right for the timing. Tom Chambers infuses his performance with quirky moves, endless classical allusions (apparently Dexter was a Latin teacher) and off the beam hunches. And of course, intuition. Tachia Newall creates his own pedestrian Lewis, exasperated with Morse’s mindset and  keen to get home to the Wife. He is cool, smart in the1987 meaning  - and amusing too, no ordinary gofer.

Minutes into the body’s discovery, on storms actor Jason Done as the fabulously vocal madly volatile Director and Manager of the theatre, Lawrence. He rages against Police Procedure - harangues the cast and bristles at Morse – they were in the same Year of 1962 – and didn’t get on even then. The vicious banter between them is brilliantly written packed full of the superior sneers at his policeman role, Morse has become used to – but not happy with. The ghosts of the play’s title are living and have left their legacy. One after another they emerge from a 25-year-old photograph of the Class of ’62. Rehearsals reprise, Hamlet keeps going, Charlotte Randle as Verity one of the old mates from way back when, is so delightfully exaggeratedly stagey she does convince us she was once Morse’s bait, and seethes with rejection all those years ago. Olivia Onyehara is Lawrence’s flamboyant wife she lights up every scene she’s in with American sassy slippery fun. James Glddon is ‘Geordie hunk,’ Freddy. He brings a much-needed Northern gravitas into the general hysteria even as he is tempted by the chance to turn bad news into advantage for him and fight off a sacking. Finally, the Goody-Two -Shoes Ellen whom Morse once, and still does fancy ( imagine that!) is played by Teresa Banham. Her implausible rejection of our hero, then now and forever, she conveys with skill and keeps us guessing to the last.

Tachia and Tom . Lewis and Morse in puzzled conference

The playwright of this version is an Inspector Morse veteran, she produced a four hour filmed session five years ago. In this début treatment for the stage her writing is on top form. Alma Cullen was around in 1962 and in 1987 – and lived for a long time in Cambridge. Long enough to perceive the oppressive elitism of the academic community who take every chance to sneer and mock their old college mate. Even Ellen the loving one-time girlfriend is pulling strings to get him accepted as a mature student, so wasted she feels, is he as a Policeman. A sharp commentary on a set of values which power the play – it is ambition and competitiveness that drives the action to the desperate end. And Inspector Morse has no part in any of that.

The Ensemble Company of Inspector Morse House of Ghosts by photographer Johan Persson