Theatre / Tabitha by Arnold Ridley and Mary Cathcart Borer. At  Belconnen Community Theatre, until October 31. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

Having pretty well exhausted the Agatha Christie repertoire, Tempo Theatre is giving new director George Belibassakis the chance to tackle a classic comic murder mystery.

Co-written by Mary Cathcart Borer and Arnold Ridley, the latter better known for playing Godfrey in the English television comedy Dad’s Army and for his play The Ghost Train, the production brings together a solid cast of nine for a distinctly English tale of understatement and clever plot twists.

The action unfolds over a single day in a run-down boarding house, beginning on Christmas Eve. After a fair amount of preliminary stage business, during which we meet the grasping and thoroughly unlikeable landlady, Miss Trellington, played by Eloise Willis, the real action begins when residents Miss Bowering, played by Marlene Collier, and the authoritative Miss Prendergast, played by Joan White, discover that Tabitha, the cat belonging to their friend Miss Goldsworthy, played by Cheryl Browne, has apparently been poisoned.

They are quick to decide who is responsible and hatch a plan to poison Miss Trellington in return. Naturally, the plot soon thickens.

This kind of play is not as easy to stage as it might appear.

While the actors articulate their lines clearly and invest their characters with individual emotions, the dialogue does not always flow naturally, and the cast rarely seems to connect with one another. Too often, they appear to be following the script rather than responding to each other.

There is also a tendency for the action to lose momentum, with characters seemingly lacking sufficient motivation to leave the room when the plot calls for it. It takes patience waiting for the next line to arrive.

The pace picks up with the arrival of a couple of familiar stage types, Chris McGrane’s Detective Inspector Bruton and Nicholas Fuller’s surgeon, Dr Brownlie, whose appearances inject fresh energy into the proceedings and help the production finish on a stronger note.

Tabitha is an entertaining script, and the audience had obviously come in the mood for a good, old-fashioned comic mystery. They followed the twists and turns with evident enjoyment.

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