EdFringe Review: Murder, She Didn’t Write

Degrees of Error’s Murder, She Didn’t Write is definitely a modern Fringe fixture, reliably selling out and known for its loyal, returning audiences. They must, I thought before my first experience, know what they are doing and do it pretty well. That turned out to be entirely…correct.

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The cast rotates, so apologies if I’ve misidentified any of the talented improvisers taking the stage on August 20th, but Lizzy Skrzypiec, Peter Baker, Caitlin Campbell, Sylvia Bishop, and Monica Gaga certainly know their business. In this case, that’s the business of improvising a totally original murder mystery within 70 minutes before a live theatre audience.

For this showing, Bishop took the role of Detective ‘Agatha Hunch’ — a role designed as prime mediator between show and audience in this loving parody of classic whodunnit tropes. It’s via her bright-eyed prompting that the audience supplies where the story will be set, and the odd object that will set it apart from humdrum murders.

She is also responsible for selecting a sidekick, who is then secretly responsible for choosing the victim and the murderer. This audience-based setting is both a strength and weakness in the show’s format; Degrees of Error are admirable in their unwillingness to plant ideas, remaining entirely dependent on the audience’s imagination.

I’ll be honest, when we embarked upon the mysterious case of the non-alcoholic beverage at the Spice Girls reunion in 1933, I was concerned. However, never underestimate talented performers who have hundreds of performances under their belts. It is a testament to their skill that they can make such an absurd premise work seamlessly within a versatile set of vintage doors and antique furnishings designed to adapt to any era. What followed may not have been the most hilarious hour of my Fringe this year, but it was darn impressive, and funny enough.

The ease with which they conjure up characters complete with clownish idiosyncrasies, accents, and histories just doesn’t happen without talent and a lot of practice. Bravo, as well, for their immediate and clever subversion of the Spice Girls idea to make it work decades before the band were born.

In this conjured tale, the ensemble became a ’30s syndicate of former girl bosses who made it big in the spice trade. Cue an onslaught of Spice Girls song titles piled into the show’s freely invented script. If that sounds potentially awkward, the reality was some truly witty and delightfully bonkers riffing on the theme of the Spice Girls discography.

Spontaneous Suspects and Live Musical Accompaniment

Not content with originating a comedy murder, the squad regularly set each other up. One moment someone will be invited to sit in an invisible chair; the next they’ll be asked to sing their famous ‘spice jingle’—all elevated by the live on-stage pianist, who provides completely spontaneous musical accompaniment to the unfolding chaos. A lot of the fun audiences return for, I reckon, comes from whatever ‘evil’ games the cast play on each other every time they take the stage.

Of course, a murder duly happens, and after leaving the characters to go mad for a little while, the show moves smoothly to bring matters to a close. Backstory scenes are slid in with real precision, offering the audience — in theory — enough to solve the case for themselves. How ‘solvable’ a case is will depend a great deal on the show’s premise and the characters it allows to emerge. I’m not convinced the Spice Girls offered them quite enough to build a satisfactory plot on, but what they made was highly entertaining!

In the end, would I see Murder, She Didn’t Write again? Yes, absolutely. I saw more than enough to convince me that on a different day they could have me in stitches. It is, I suggest, more than worth the ticket price and taking the chance that you’ll walk in on a classic.

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