Tags
Detective fiction, Edinburgh Festival, Edinburgh Fringe, Hayton on Homicide, Robert Jezek, Sarah Kenyon, Spiritualism, Theatre Review
This evening I made it to a late showing of Hayton on Homicide, a new play by Michelle Golder about a Victorian sceptic, Professor George Hayton (Robert Jezek), who attempts to find a rational explanation for a mysterious murder and, in doing so, put to bed the supernatural solutions offered by his wife Florence (Sarah Kenyon). I was a little turned off by this play at first – it seemed like Victorian twits prancing about in top hats and bumbling over the brandy – but it gradually emerges as a smartly written and deftly performed entertainment. The play bares its teeth fully in a surprising and striking hallucination scene, but the most endearing feature is the to-and-fro between Hayton, the paternalistic man of science, and his chirpy wife, who freely dissents from scientific wisdom.
The premise of Hayton on Homicide will be assuredly familiar: the sceptic is, it transpires, blinded by his faith in reason (“prejudiced against anything that you don’t understand,” as his wife puts it), whilst the supernaturalist is not as foolish and credulous as one may assume. Yet the novelty of the play lies in casting two ideological adversaries – reason and superstition – as an affectionately quarrelsome husband and wife and, whilst they will never see eye-to-eye, both will save face and claim points of victory. There should be a general moratorium on detectives in contemporary culture – they get ever more tiresome – but Hayton and his sidekick-wife show a good deal of promise as personalities in this field, and one hopes that they feature again in further adventures.
[Hayton on Homicide is presently running twice daily at the Royal College of Surgeons on Nicolson Street.]
