Blood Confession

Published Monday 13 August 2007 at 12:20 by Mark Shenton

What do you get when you pair up two Catholic priests and two policemen? It sounds like the set-up for a bad joke, but though at first I hoped that Nick Awde’s play was going to be a parody of would-be shock theatre and that the terrible fringe acting was part of that joke, in fact it turns out be in deadly earnest.

But that doesn’t stop one having difficulty keeping a straight face watching the implausible police station drama that unfolds as the file for a 25-year-old case is reopened, revolving around the death of an 11-year-old boy in a care home and the suppression of an autopsy report that suggested he was sexually abused before he died.

As the inconsistencies in the story are feebly unfolded, there are even more in the writing and production of it, and without giving away what little suspense there is, it is surely impossible for the character of the Detective Sergeant to be the age of actor Andrew Pugsley, given the time-line.

But then Jon Bonfiglio’s slap-dash production fails to generate any tension or plausibility, either, and all four actors seem to be embarrassed to be there. No wonder they don’t take a curtain call, which is probably the most honest moment in the production.