Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Juliet Mills, Maxwell Caulfield, Lorna Fitzgerald, Matt Barber, Robert Duncan, Philip Lowrie, Ben Nealon, Elizabeth Payne, Mark Carlisle, Joe Reisig, Natalie Law, James Boswell, Cara Ballingall.

A classic thriller, the blood runs warm at the thought, the detective juices are turned on and the simmering undercurrent of intrigue is stirred sufficiently to keep an audience on their toes; a story worthy of the great crime dramas, The Lady Vanishes has all the hall marks of a tale of conspiracy and manoeuvring, of being part of a time in which an ideal of Europe was decaying and in which a new, terrifying order was being installed, a Europe on the brink.

Whilst all the attention would have been on the major plot unfolding, and rightly so considering the epic nature of the play which has Director’s Roy Marsden’s touch weaved almost with a deft of silk alongside that of the original film maestro Alfred Hitchcock but it is to the pairing of Robert Duncan and Ben Nealon as the cricket fanatics Charters and Caldicott that the eyes and theatrical soul cannot but help be impressed by during the performance.

In the same way that Shakespeare’s Hamlet is enhanced by the appearance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as subjects of the absurd and the oblivious to the story being created, so to do Charters and Caldicott add this sense of the blissful unconsciousness to the proceedings; a mind of the beautiful game after all requires more depth of feeling than one surrounded by the scorn of war.

Robert Duncan has portrayed some sensational characters on television and in theatre, but perhaps arguably none, with the exception of the sycophantic Scumspawn in the radio series Old Harry’s Game, has produced such genius of spirit, aided impeccably by Mr. Nealon, it is to this exceptional pairing that the play is released fully from its tethers and given the air of humanity that has been sorely missing from other adaptions.

A rousing play, one not afraid to endure the time it was set against, one that makes no apologies, as it should not have to, for the sentiment of the fear of the fascist agenda and one that mirrors that sense of concern to which the modern world is facing. The Lady Vanishes may be a product of its time but when portrayed with as much depth as imagined by The Classic Thriller Company and the adaption by Antony Lampard, then it a show of impeccable taste.

Ian D. Hall