★★★★

TALKING Scarlet do justice to Terence Feely’s cunning plot and cutting dialogue in Who Killed Santa Claus? at the Devonshire Park Theatre.

Director Patric Kearns comes up trumps and gets the casting right with television favourites David Callister (The Bill), Freya Copeland (Emmerdale), Kim Tidy (The Bill and Hollyoaks) and Gary Turner (Emmerdale). Callister, who played a comedic inspector in Secondary Cause of Death, this time excels as the serious Superintendent Moore. He maintains his character’s credibility by delivering witty one-liners as sharp putdowns rather than jokes.

Moore is called to the Chelsea home of TV star Barbara Love, capably played by Copeland, on Christmas Eve, 1971, after she is threatened by a chilling voice on her answering machine and receives a macabre effigy of herself in a miniature coffin. Barbara’s guests, colleagues on her television show, each have a motive to murder her.

The suspects are her assistant Connie (Kim Tiddy), producer Jack Barnes (Davies Palmer), director Paul Reston (Gary Turner), writer Donald Lewis (Jeremy Lloyd Thomas) and make-up artist Ray Lacey (Michael Cross).

Cross comes across as a gay caricature (albeit a funny one), while Matthew Zilch captures the creepiness, if not fully the vulnerability, of photographer Dave Ogden.