Portrait of Murder provides plenty of lies, deceit and threats - but strangely no murders!

Robert Bloomfield’s complex play, the last of Talking Scarlet’s thriller season at the Devonshire Park Theatre, tells how author Paula Barlow cannot remember anything – or anyone – after spending many months in hospital recovering from head injuries received in a boiler explosion.

Her nightmare situation gets worse as it emerges that her husband and best friend are having an affair and had plotted to kill her.

So far so good, but, although director Patric Kearns varies the pace well, Bloomfield’s wordy plot becomes drawn out. It revolves around discovering what happened on the day of Paula’s ‘accident’ and, although there are twists and turns, most of them lack credibility.

On the plus side several moments of tension are created with the aid of flashbacks, in which Kearns and designer Geoff Gilder make the transitions realistic.

Michelle Morris, who excels in showing Paula’s Jekyll and Hyde tendencies, has her best scenes with the equally impressive Keiron Crook, as her reassuring husband, and John Hester, as her faithful agent. But Marcus Hutton and Polly Smith could have shown greater depth as her friends, the flamboyant Tod and disloyal Denise.

Three stars