Robert Day
Details
Venue: Yvonne-Arnaud Theatre, Guildford
Dates & Opening Times: 20th - 24th November
- 19:45 - Tue 20 Nov 2018
- 19:45 - Wed 21 Nov 2018
- 14:30 - Thu 22 Nov 2018
- 19:45 - Thu 22 Nov 2018
- 20:00 - Fri 23 Nov 2018
- 14:30 - Sat 24 Nov 2018
- 20:00 - Sat 24 Nov 2018
Tickets: From £23 www.yvonne-arnaud.co.uk
Our Verdict
Detective Inspector Rebus takes to the stage at Guildford's Yvonne Arnaud Theatre until Nov 24. Lori Heiss finds an engaging, but a sometimes plodding adaptation that fails to live up to the promise of the novels, but still provides enough entertainment to be worth a visit.
Ian Rankin’s Rebus comes to the stage for the first time in this adaptation of an original story by the author in conjunction with playwright Rona Munro. The cantankerous old detective is as crotchety as ever as he tries to exorcise ghosts of murder victims past while butting heads with his old nemesis Big Ger Cafferty. These characters, along with Rebus’s sidekick Siobhan, will be familiar to fans of the long-running crime novel series and they take centre stage here, with their difficult and storied relationships providing the fodder for most of the dramatic sparks.
The other main characters in the story take the form of a Greek chorus of the ghosts of two murder victims, who harangue Rebus for his failure to find them justice, and one of the victim’s daughter. But it is the ghosts of Rebus’s own past transgressions which almost serve to be his undoing, and could act as the final blockade for justice for the erstwhile victims.
Robert Day
Staged in a stripped back set of all black in which a dark staircase seemed the star of the show, more could have been done to portray the seedy bars, drab police stations and glittering lights of Edinburgh which feature so heavily in Rankin’s Rebus novels, and which form a bit part of their heady allure. Here, all that is left to our imagination and John Stahl’s engaging turn as mob boss Cafferty is the most colourful thing on the stage.
Burdened by dialogue that borders on long-winded at times, the action could move a bit more quickly rather than getting lost in the pontifications of the characters, and the first act seemed strangely shorter than the second. The plaintive refrain of the ghostly victims who appear again and again to admonish Rebus for forgetting about them beats the unbalanced detective into a fury at his failure to find them justice, but they are a dark and drab backdrop to an already bleak landscape. They might have been used in a different way and more could have been made of the murders and their unravelling as they seem to fade into the background and become secondary to the dramas between the lead characters, with the story becoming less of a whodunnit and more centred on a battle of wills.
But the lead performances are solid and keep you engaged throughout, especially notable is Stahl’s Cafferty who loves the finer things in life and rattling Rebus’s cage equally as much. Also, the game is Charles Lawson with his gruff and tortured portrayal of Rebus and Cathy Tyson as his long-suffering protegee. Overall, the show was engaging enough to be entertaining, but not quite the adaptation such a gripping series of novels could have been. With an ending that seemed open to more Rebus adaptations being staged in the future, perhaps this can be improved upon for future runs.
