Over My Dead Body (play)
Encyclopedia
Over My Dead Body is a comedy/thriller play, written by Michael Sutton
and Anthony Fingleton, "suggested by" Robert L. Fish's 1968 novel The Murder League.
It opened at the Savoy Theatre
, London
on 20 February 1989 and ran until 19 August 1989, starring Sir Donald Sinden as Trevor Foyle, June Whitfield
as Dora Winslow, Frank Middlemass
as Bartie Cruikshank, Marc Sinden
as Simon Vale, Ken Wynne as Charters, with Paul Ridley, Chris Tranchell
and William Sleigh, It was directed by Brian Murray
.
An earlier draft played a limited engagement at the Hartman Theatre, Stamford, CT, in November, 1984. It starred Fritz Weaver
, Tammy Grimes
, Thomas Toner, William Preston, Mordecai Lawner, Stephen Newman, Richard Clarke and Walter Atamaniuk and was directed by Edwin Sherin
.
An acting edition was published by Dramatists Play Service
in 1998 and remains in print as of .
"whodunit
", the audience knows from the start the identities of the would-be murderers, and is taken step-by-step through their inept attempts to carry out their convoluted crime. The play thus falls into the sub-genre of "inverted" detective story
, characterized by being told from the viewpoint not of the detective but of the criminal, the emphasis being on the suspense of whether he/she/they will succeed and, if so, evade capture, rather than the surprise resulting from an unknown killer's unmasking. Other works in the "inverted" vein include Francis Ile's
Malice Aforethought
, Frederick Forsyth's
The Day of the Jackal
, Frederick Knott's
Wait Until Dark
, and numerous film and television works produced and/or directed by Alfred Hitchcock
, such as Rope
, Dial M for Murder
, and Marnie
.
There, day after day, waited upon by the League's loyal (and even more aged) butler Charters, the pompous Trevor rails against the decline in crime-writing standards, while the more philosophical Dora busies herself with her knitting, and ever-oblivious Bartie dozes in his easy chair, dreaming of murder plots long past.
Passing through the club, Simon Vale—a younger member who writes best-selling thrillers steeped in sex and gore—belittles the elder trio for their persistence in portraying murder as stylish, ingeniously contrived puzzles, rather than the brutal, bloody, frequently irrational thing it is in real life.
Stung by his words, the three older writers hypothesize what would happen should a real-life murder be committed as it is in their books, with outré touches and cryptic clues. Conceivably, it would spark a renaissance of "Golden Age"
whodunits—perhaps even motivate people to buy their books again.
Fired with enthusiasm at the prospect, they resolve to turn their hypothesis into reality: instead of merely writing a fictional murder, they'll commit a real one!
Needless to say, they ultimately learn that arranging for someone to be found shot, stabbed and hanged in a room locked and barricaded from the inside (wearing a gorilla costume, no less) is somewhat more difficult to accomplish in real life than on the printed page. Especially when the would-be murderers are considerably past their physical prime and, as it turns out, prone to queasiness when confronted with the necessity of having to inflict actual physical mayhem on a real, live human being.
With the aid of, among other diverse items, a bayonetted rifle, a Xanax
-laced bottle of ketchup, a mace-wielding suit of armor, an ill-fitting red dress, a recalcitrant thumbtack, a convenient gust of wind, and an unsuspected fly in the ointment—the classic British detective story and our protagonists' reputations are ultimately rescued from a premature demise.
Real-life crimes and criminals are also mentioned:
, an informal organization of British detective story writers founded in 1930, reality has been somewhat romanticized for the stage. The original never occupied permanent "gentlemen’s club" type rooms such as in the play—with aged servant, macabre memorabilia, and "excellent wine cellar"—but instead met at a variety of locales for its periodic get-togethers.
Liberties also appear to have been taken with the ages of the play’s protagonists. Though no specific year is given for the play's action, allusions to Xanax
, Sylvester Stallone
, and the phrase "get your rocks off" set it in the mid-1980s (the time of the play's writing) at the earliest. Yet Trevor and Bartie are described as being in their 70’s, and Dora— though only characterized as being "of advanced years"—is clearly intended to be their contemporary.
This would not only put them in their teens at the time of the real-life Detection Club’s founding, but make them at least twenty years the junior of the youngest of its actual founding members, Anthony Berkeley
(b. 1893). Even precocity, one presumes, has its limits.
and "hard-boiled"
genres of crime writing, heavily emphasized in the play, is non-existent in the novel, as is the characters’ intention of being caught and made to pay the penalty for what they’ve done.
Unlike those in the play, the protagonists of the novel succeed in directly and unambiguously murdering not just one but ten victims, and the book ends in a lengthy trial scene not in the theatrical version.
Even the novel’s title has a different connotation than in the play, referring to the principal trio of characters rather than a literary organization.
The prolific Fish—author of over 40 novels and short stories, including the one on which the Steve McQueen
film Bullitt
was based—subsequently followed The Murder League with two sequels featuring the same principals: Rub-a-Dub-Dub (1971) and A Gross Carriage of Justice (1979).
Robert L. Fish died in 1981, two years before the writing of Over My Dead Body.
Its reception in London, however, was less than enthusiastic, the only genuine "rave" review coming from the Financial Times
:
Over My Dead Body nevertheless enjoyed a 7-month run in London and has since received numerous non-professional stagings both in America and abroad, notably in Japan.
A review of a repertory production at the Asolo Theatre Company, Sarasota, Florida in 1997 declared:
In program notes for the same staging, the late, renowned detective author Stuart M. Kaminsky
wrote:
Michael Sutton (playwright)
Michael Sutton is an American playwright, television writer, novelist and computer instructor.Born Michael Fossen in Pasadena, California, he adopted the name of his mother's second husband at an early age, following her divorce from his birth father.In 1979, he was commissioned by an agent-friend...
and Anthony Fingleton, "suggested by" Robert L. Fish's 1968 novel The Murder League.
It opened at the Savoy Theatre
Savoy Theatre
The Savoy Theatre is a West End theatre located in the Strand in the City of Westminster, London, England. The theatre opened on 10 October 1881 and was built by Richard D'Oyly Carte on the site of the old Savoy Palace as a showcase for the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan,...
, London
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
on 20 February 1989 and ran until 19 August 1989, starring Sir Donald Sinden as Trevor Foyle, June Whitfield
June Whitfield
June Rosemary Whitfield, CBE is an English actress, well known in the United Kingdom since the 1950s for roles in radio and television comedy series....
as Dora Winslow, Frank Middlemass
Frank Middlemass
Francis George Middlemass was an English actor, who even in his early career played older roles. He is best remembered for his television roles as Rocky Hardcastle in As Time Goes By, Algy Herries in To Serve Them All My Days and Dr. Alex Ferrenby in Heartbeat...
as Bartie Cruikshank, Marc Sinden
Marc Sinden
Marc Sinden is an English theatre producer, documentary director and actor. His father is the actor Sir Donald Sinden.-Theatre:...
as Simon Vale, Ken Wynne as Charters, with Paul Ridley, Chris Tranchell
Chris Tranchell
Christopher P. Tranchell is a British actor, best known for his role in the television drama Survivors as Paul Pitman....
and William Sleigh, It was directed by Brian Murray
Brian Murray
Brian Murray is a South African actor and theatre director. He was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 2004....
.
An earlier draft played a limited engagement at the Hartman Theatre, Stamford, CT, in November, 1984. It starred Fritz Weaver
Fritz Weaver
Fritz William Weaver is an American actor and voice actor.-Life and career:Weaver was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Elsa W. and John Carson Weaver. His mother was of Italian descent and his father was a social worker from Pittsburgh. Weaver attended Peabody High School...
, Tammy Grimes
Tammy Grimes
-Early life:Grimes was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, the daughter of Eola Willard , a naturalist and spiritualist, and Nicholas Luther Grimes, an innkeeper, country-club manager, and farmer. She attended high school at the then-all girls school, Beaver Country Day School, in Chestnut Hill,...
, Thomas Toner, William Preston, Mordecai Lawner, Stephen Newman, Richard Clarke and Walter Atamaniuk and was directed by Edwin Sherin
Edwin Sherin
Edwin Sherin is an American theatre and television director and producer. He is the husband of actress Jane Alexander. He has directed many episodes of the television drama Law & Order, as well as directing for the stage, mainly on Broadway, including The Great White Hope.-Biography:Born in...
.
An acting edition was published by Dramatists Play Service
Dramatists Play Service
Established in 1936 by members of the Dramatists Guild and the Society for Authors' Representatives, Dramatists Play Service, Inc. is a theatrical publishing and licensing house...
in 1998 and remains in print as of .
Overview
Over My Dead Body is a comedic homage to the detective stories of the 1920s and ‘30s, but is more accurately classified as a comedy-thriller than a comedy-mystery. Unlike the traditional Agatha Christie-styleAgatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
"whodunit
Whodunit
A whodunit or whodunnit is a complex, plot-driven variety of the detective story in which the puzzle is the main feature of interest. The reader or viewer is provided with clues from which the identity of the perpetrator of the crime may be deduced before the solution is revealed in the final...
", the audience knows from the start the identities of the would-be murderers, and is taken step-by-step through their inept attempts to carry out their convoluted crime. The play thus falls into the sub-genre of "inverted" detective story
Inverted detective story
An inverted detective story, also known as a "howdhecatchem", is a murder mystery fiction structure in which the commission of the crime is shown or described at the beginning, usually including the identity of the perpetrator. The story then describes the detective's attempt to solve the mystery...
, characterized by being told from the viewpoint not of the detective but of the criminal, the emphasis being on the suspense of whether he/she/they will succeed and, if so, evade capture, rather than the surprise resulting from an unknown killer's unmasking. Other works in the "inverted" vein include Francis Ile's
Anthony Berkeley Cox
Anthony Berkeley Cox was an English crime writer. He wrote under several pen-names, including Francis Iles, Anthony Berkeley and A. Monmouth Platts.- Life :...
Malice Aforethought
Malice Aforethought
Malice Aforethought is a murder mystery novel written by Anthony Berkeley Cox, using the pen name Francis Iles. It involves a Devon physician who slowly poisons his domineering wife so that he may be with the woman he loves. It is an early and prominent example of the "inverted detective story",...
, Frederick Forsyth's
Frederick Forsyth
Frederick Forsyth, CBE is an English author and occasional political commentator. He is best known for thrillers such as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fist of God, Icon, The Veteran, Avenger, The Afghan and The Cobra.-...
The Day of the Jackal
The Day of the Jackal
The Day of the Jackal is a thriller novel by English writer Frederick Forsyth, about a professional assassin who is contracted by the OAS, a French terrorist group of the early 1960s, to kill Charles de Gaulle, the President of France....
, Frederick Knott's
Frederick Knott
Frederick Major Paull Knott was an English playwright, best known for writing the London-based stage thriller Dial M for Murder, which was later filmed in Hollywood by Alfred Hitchcock....
Wait Until Dark
Wait Until Dark
Wait Until Dark is a play by Frederick Knott.-Synopsis:Susy Hendrix is a blind Greenwich Village housewife who becomes the target of three con-men searching for the heroin hidden in a doll, which her husband Sam innocently transported from Canada as a favor to a woman who has since been murdered...
, and numerous film and television works produced and/or directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
, such as Rope
Rope
A rope is a length of fibres, twisted or braided together to improve strength for pulling and connecting. It has tensile strength but is too flexible to provide compressive strength...
, Dial M for Murder
Dial M for Murder
Dial M for Murder is a 1954 American thriller film adapted from a successful stage play by Frederick Knott, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, and Robert Cummings. The movie was released by the Warner Bros...
, and Marnie
Marnie
Marnie is a 1961 English novel written by Winston Graham, about a young woman who makes a living by embezzling from her employers, moving on, and changing her identity. She is finally caught in the act by one of her employers, a young widower named Mark Rutland, who blackmails her into marriage...
.
Plot synopsis
Trevor Foyle, Dora Winslow, and Bartie Cruikshank are British mystery writers whose time has come and gone. Having watched their style of fiction—with its eccentric detectives, "impossible" murders, and least-likely suspects—dwindle in popularity and sales over the decades, they're resigned to living out their few remaining years in the reading room of the Murder League: a crime-writers' literary club of which they are the last surviving founders.There, day after day, waited upon by the League's loyal (and even more aged) butler Charters, the pompous Trevor rails against the decline in crime-writing standards, while the more philosophical Dora busies herself with her knitting, and ever-oblivious Bartie dozes in his easy chair, dreaming of murder plots long past.
Passing through the club, Simon Vale—a younger member who writes best-selling thrillers steeped in sex and gore—belittles the elder trio for their persistence in portraying murder as stylish, ingeniously contrived puzzles, rather than the brutal, bloody, frequently irrational thing it is in real life.
Stung by his words, the three older writers hypothesize what would happen should a real-life murder be committed as it is in their books, with outré touches and cryptic clues. Conceivably, it would spark a renaissance of "Golden Age"
Golden Age of Detective Fiction
The Golden Age of Detective Fiction was an era of classic murder mystery novels produced by various authors, all following similar patterns and style.-Origins:Mademoiselle de Scudéri, by E.T.A...
whodunits—perhaps even motivate people to buy their books again.
Fired with enthusiasm at the prospect, they resolve to turn their hypothesis into reality: instead of merely writing a fictional murder, they'll commit a real one!
Needless to say, they ultimately learn that arranging for someone to be found shot, stabbed and hanged in a room locked and barricaded from the inside (wearing a gorilla costume, no less) is somewhat more difficult to accomplish in real life than on the printed page. Especially when the would-be murderers are considerably past their physical prime and, as it turns out, prone to queasiness when confronted with the necessity of having to inflict actual physical mayhem on a real, live human being.
With the aid of, among other diverse items, a bayonetted rifle, a Xanax
Alprazolam
Alprazolam is a short-acting anxiolytic of the benzodiazepine class of psychoactive drugs. Alprazolam, like other benzodiazepines, binds to specific sites on the GABAA gamma-amino-butyric acid receptor...
-laced bottle of ketchup, a mace-wielding suit of armor, an ill-fitting red dress, a recalcitrant thumbtack, a convenient gust of wind, and an unsuspected fly in the ointment—the classic British detective story and our protagonists' reputations are ultimately rescued from a premature demise.
Allusions
Over My Dead Body alludes frequently to actual works of detective fiction, including:- The Murder of Roger AckroydThe Murder of Roger AckroydThe Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by William Collins & Sons in June 1926 and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company on the 19th of the same month. It features Hercule Poirot as the lead detective...
(Agatha ChristieAgatha ChristieDame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
, 1926) - What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw4.50 From Paddington4.50 from PaddingtonThe article time reads: Four-fifty from Paddington. In the United Kingdom's time notation, hours and minutes may be separated by a dot rather than a colon sign...
(Agatha ChristieAgatha ChristieDame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
, 1934) - Trent's Last CaseTrent's Last CaseTrent's Last Case is a detective novel written by E.C. Bentley and first published in 1913. Its central character reappeared subsequently in the novel Trent's Own Case and the short-story collection Trent Intervenes .-Plot summary:...
(E.C. BentleyEdmund Clerihew BentleyE. C. Bentley was a popular English novelist and humorist of the early twentieth century, and the inventor of the clerihew, an irregular form of humorous verse on biographical topics...
, 1913) - Gaudy NightGaudy NightGaudy Night is a mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the tenth in her popular series about aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, and the third featuring crime writer Harriet Vane....
(Dorothy L. SayersDorothy L. SayersDorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages...
, 1935)
Real-life crimes and criminals are also mentioned:
- The siege of Sidney StreetSiege of Sidney StreetThe Siege of Sidney Street, popularly known as the "Battle of Stepney", was a notorious gunfight in London's East End on the 2nd of January 1911. Preceded by the Houndsditch Murders, it ended with the deaths of two members of a supposedly politically-motivated gang of burglars supposedly led by...
- The Manson Family murders
- Jack the RipperJack the Ripper"Jack the Ripper" is the best-known name given to an unidentified serial killer who was active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. The name originated in a letter, written by someone claiming to be the murderer, that was disseminated in the...
Discrepancies
The authors take a certain degree of artistic license with the setting of Over My Dead Body. Though the Murder League of the play is clearly patterned after the real-life Detection ClubDetection Club
The Detection Club was formed in 1930 by a group of British mystery writers, including Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Freeman Wills Crofts, Arthur Morrison, John Rhode, Jessie Rickard, Baroness Emma Orczy, R. Austin Freeman, G.D.H. Cole, Margaret Cole, E.C. Bentley, and H.C. Bailey. Anthony...
, an informal organization of British detective story writers founded in 1930, reality has been somewhat romanticized for the stage. The original never occupied permanent "gentlemen’s club" type rooms such as in the play—with aged servant, macabre memorabilia, and "excellent wine cellar"—but instead met at a variety of locales for its periodic get-togethers.
Liberties also appear to have been taken with the ages of the play’s protagonists. Though no specific year is given for the play's action, allusions to Xanax
Alprazolam
Alprazolam is a short-acting anxiolytic of the benzodiazepine class of psychoactive drugs. Alprazolam, like other benzodiazepines, binds to specific sites on the GABAA gamma-amino-butyric acid receptor...
, Sylvester Stallone
Sylvester Stallone
Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone , commonly known as Sylvester Stallone, and nicknamed Sly Stallone, is an American actor, filmmaker, screenwriter, film director and occasional painter. Stallone is known for his machismo and Hollywood action roles. Two of the notable characters he has portrayed...
, and the phrase "get your rocks off" set it in the mid-1980s (the time of the play's writing) at the earliest. Yet Trevor and Bartie are described as being in their 70’s, and Dora— though only characterized as being "of advanced years"—is clearly intended to be their contemporary.
This would not only put them in their teens at the time of the real-life Detection Club’s founding, but make them at least twenty years the junior of the youngest of its actual founding members, Anthony Berkeley
Anthony Berkeley Cox
Anthony Berkeley Cox was an English crime writer. He wrote under several pen-names, including Francis Iles, Anthony Berkeley and A. Monmouth Platts.- Life :...
(b. 1893). Even precocity, one presumes, has its limits.
Divergence from Source Material
The published edition of Over My Dead Body states the play was "Suggested by the novel The Murder League, by Robert L. Fish." This would appear to be an accurate assessment, as the only element retained from the original novel is the central concept of three elderly British mystery writers turning to real murder. All else has been changed: the basic plot-line, the methods of the protagonists to achieve their goal, their motive (purely pecuniary in the novel), subsidiary characters and locales, the protagonists' names—and even, in the case of one, gender. The conflict between the "cozy"Cozy (genre)
Cozy mysteries, also referred to simply as "cozies," are a subgenre of crime fiction in which sex and violence are downplayed or treated humorously, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community...
and "hard-boiled"
Hardboiled
Hardboiled crime fiction is a literary style, most commonly associated with detective stories, distinguished by the unsentimental portrayal of violence and sex. The style was pioneered by Carroll John Daly in the mid-1920s, popularized by Dashiell Hammett over the course of the decade, and refined...
genres of crime writing, heavily emphasized in the play, is non-existent in the novel, as is the characters’ intention of being caught and made to pay the penalty for what they’ve done.
Unlike those in the play, the protagonists of the novel succeed in directly and unambiguously murdering not just one but ten victims, and the book ends in a lengthy trial scene not in the theatrical version.
Even the novel’s title has a different connotation than in the play, referring to the principal trio of characters rather than a literary organization.
The prolific Fish—author of over 40 novels and short stories, including the one on which the Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen
Terrence Steven "Steve" McQueen was an American movie actor. He was nicknamed "The King of Cool." His "anti-hero" persona, which he developed at the height of the Vietnam counterculture, made him one of the top box-office draws of the 1960s and 1970s. McQueen received an Academy Award nomination...
film Bullitt
Bullitt
Bullitt is a 1968 American police procedural film starring Steve McQueen, Jacqueline Bisset and Robert Vaughn. It was directed by Peter Yates and distributed by Warner Bros. The story was adapted for the screen by Alan Trustman and Harry Kleiner, based on the 1963 novel Mute Witness by Robert L....
was based—subsequently followed The Murder League with two sequels featuring the same principals: Rub-a-Dub-Dub (1971) and A Gross Carriage of Justice (1979).
Robert L. Fish died in 1981, two years before the writing of Over My Dead Body.
Critical Reaction
Over My Dead Body received positive critical response in its pre-London try-out:-
- "It is very funny indeed...should appeal to detective story buffs and those who like a play to have plenty of humour... would be a pleasure to watch if only for the characters it contains."
-
- "A source of wonder and delirious delight...one of the funniest plays of its kind... had it not been for the inhibiting restraints of the theatre mystique for the preservation of its dignity, I would have been overtaken by convulsions, propelled into the aisles, a happy, helpless invalid of intemperate laughter."
Its reception in London, however, was less than enthusiastic, the only genuine "rave" review coming from the Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
:
-
- "Welcome back whodunnit land... Sutton and Fingleton have gone for the gold by presenting the ultimate spoof thriller."
Over My Dead Body nevertheless enjoyed a 7-month run in London and has since received numerous non-professional stagings both in America and abroad, notably in Japan.
A review of a repertory production at the Asolo Theatre Company, Sarasota, Florida in 1997 declared:
-
- "As the sight gags get more outrageous, the pace gets more manic. You might declare the play guilty of terminal madcap silliness. But that's hardly a capital crime."
In program notes for the same staging, the late, renowned detective author Stuart M. Kaminsky
Stuart M. Kaminsky
Stuart M. Kaminsky was an American mystery writer and film professor. He is known for three long-running series of mystery novels featuring the protagonists Toby Peters, a private detective in 1940s Hollywood; Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, a Moscow police inspector; and veteran Chicago...
wrote:
-
- "Over My Dead Body... is in the greatest tradition of mystery-comedy, a comedy which shows respect for the things we loved and probably still love about the traditional mystery from the murder in the locked room to the doddering ancient butler. The trick, dear reader (as Dr. WatsonJohn Watson (Sherlock Holmes)John H. Watson, M.D. , known as Dr. Watson, is a character in the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Watson is Sherlock Holmes's friend, assistant and sometime flatmate, and is the first person narrator of all but four stories in the Sherlock Holmes canon.-Name:Doctor Watson's first...
might write) is in laughing with the tale and its conventions and not at them, to approach the tales of brilliant, often flamboyant and eccentric amateur sleuths and those who have written about them with nostalgic admiration and a sigh of recognition.
- "Over My Dead Body... is in the greatest tradition of mystery-comedy, a comedy which shows respect for the things we loved and probably still love about the traditional mystery from the murder in the locked room to the doddering ancient butler. The trick, dear reader (as Dr. Watson
-
- "Above all, Over My Dead Body is funny. But it is also a roaringly good mystery full of twists, turns and several surprise endings. It is a perfect potage of SleuthSleuth (play)Sleuth is a 1970 play written by Anthony Shaffer. The play is set in the Wiltshire, England manor house of Andrew Wyke, an immensely successful mystery writer. His home reflects Wyke's obsession with the inventions and deceptions of fiction and his fascination with games and game-playing...
, The Real Inspector HoundThe Real Inspector HoundThe Real Inspector Hound is a short, one-act play by Tom Stoppard. The plot follows two theatre critics named Moon and Birdboot who are watching a ludicrous setup of a country house murder mystery, in the style of a whodunit...
, and Noises OffNoises OffNoises Off is a 1982 play by English playwright Michael Frayn. The idea for it was born in 1970, when Frayn was standing in the wings watching a performance of Chinamen, a farce that he had written for Lynn Redgrave...
. Add to this the fact that Over My Dead Body, like SleuthSleuth (play)Sleuth is a 1970 play written by Anthony Shaffer. The play is set in the Wiltshire, England manor house of Andrew Wyke, an immensely successful mystery writer. His home reflects Wyke's obsession with the inventions and deceptions of fiction and his fascination with games and game-playing...
and The Last of SheilaThe Last of SheilaThe Last of Sheila is a 1973 mystery film directed by Herbert Ross, written by Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim, It stars Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, James Coburn, James Mason, Ian McShane, Joan Hackett, and Raquel Welch....
, is about mystery writers and you have a deliciously subtle detective story and its practictioners.
- "Above all, Over My Dead Body is funny. But it is also a roaringly good mystery full of twists, turns and several surprise endings. It is a perfect potage of Sleuth