Rebus: A Game called Malice

Ian Rankin and Simon Reade
Queen's Theatre Hornchurch
Pavilion Theatre, Glasgow

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Gray O'Brien as John Rebus Credit: Nobby Clark
Jade Kennedy as Candida Jones and Abigail Thaw as Stephanie Jeffries Credit: Nobby Clark
Teresa Banham as Harriet Godwin, Gray O'Brien as John Rebus and Billy Hartman as Jack Fleming Credit: Nobby Clark

As the latest tome from the pen / keyboard of Sir Ian Rankin is about to hit the shelves where we find out how well John Rebus does in Saughton Prison, right behind a televisual reboot of the detective with Richard Rankin (no relation) in the lead role, I was headed to Rebus’s 21st. Gray O’Brien is the 21st incantation of the grizzled, irascible and seedy detective of Sir Ian’s imagination. Rebus: A Game Called Malice is not a new caper for Scotland’s number one detective, having toured before, but O’Brien is the newbie and plays him with his customary skill.

The problem with any character lifted from the pages of fiction is that beauty is often held in the mind’s eye of the reader. That is why people balked at John Hannah, campaigned for Ken Stott and have now embraced the new guy—the aforementioned Richard Rankin. In the previous twenty versions, you can also throw in some real heavyweights like Brian Cox delivering a lockdown version and the likes of Ron Donnachie performing the role on radio, and we have plenty of reference material from which to choose to make comparisons—unfair or otherwise. Rebus may well be the Celtic version of Poirot; though lord preserve us from Kenneth Branagh chancing his hand.

And so going to anything associated with John Rebus can be a bit of a tricky negotiation: you need to leave your expectations at the door. Sir Ian has also been recently talking both of how Rebus came about—losing his mum at 19 is a factor—and his great love of theatre, so I wanted to see this through as fresh eyes as possible.

And so, the premise of the script is an evening in an Edinburgh town house which drips wealth. Rebus has been drafted in by an old flame to be her plus one to join two other couples in an evening which begins with a murder mystery game, called Malice. The fact that it is soon discarded in place of another mystery when a body is found upstairs allows the conceit to depart before its arrival has made much of a mess of things. We begin well, but halfway through the first half, it does get bogged down a little in exposition-heavy dialogue. The fact that Rebus has already had a first spotlight moment onstage reminds us that this a theatrical venture rather than anything more cinematic. The director cannot focus our gaze as much as the TV might allow. As contrived as some of the dialogue may feel in the first half, by the second, it pops like the corks out their champagne bottles; Rankin has got his head round the structure well enough.

It is important to get beyond the idea that our hard man of the streets is now in the soft-focus lens of the gentry. He is on the hunt for nobody through his general, rather than genial, curiosity. He is amongst some vipers in this posh nest—a social media trophy wife, Candida Jones (Jade Kennedy), who ain’t no gangster’s moll, the gangster himself Jack Fleming (Billy Hartman), and the hosts Harriet (Teresa Banham) and Paul Godwin (Neil McKinven), who are all unsaid marital tension covered by a fur coat, with an absence of underwear. The former flame of Rebus who invited him along is a lawyer, Stephanie Jeffries (Abigail Thaw), who once defended the very gangster in the room. Added to that is the fact that the gangster has lost a chef who was encouraged by their host to leave his employ and has been cooking them dinner for tonight, and soon tensions mount and revelations tumble.

The one thing you can really depend upon with a master storyteller like Sir Ian is the story hangs together. The twist is great. The build-up to the eventual reveal of what has actually happened sees Rebus in the second half bustle about, all business as he works to coordinate the unseen police presence. This allows for those who have secrets to tell to simply tell them. Like his author and creator, Rebus knows just how to hike up the tension to discover the facts.

But it will always need a director who knows how to strike the right balance, and Loveday Ingram does that with great skill. Onstage, the cast have more than a whiff of experience amongst them but deliver it with an ensemble feeling that you are always entertained—and puzzled. I was blown away by Neil McKinven’s channelling of the ghost of Alasdair Gray.

The one thing I did struggle with was Rebus being so enamoured by them, as this was a setting where the man of the streets might be hoping to fall out the window to reconnect with them, but O’Brien is so skilled that this was soon replaced by some of the deft characterisation he employs to keep you in his palm. It became a version of a locked room mystery, as the body was not in the room, but the chief suspects were. And what a room has been created by Terry Parson. This is an exquisite dining room with the paintings on the wall.

This is far from a radical night out, and those of us who keep our Rebus close to our hearts and affection should not be frit to attend. It is exactly what it suggests on the tin: a whodunnit with standard fare, but done with more than a modicum of flair.

Reviewer: Donald C Stewart

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