The Detective's Demise
Rating: ★★★
Venue: The Other Palace, London
Cast: Nora Shields, Amy Langton-Smith, James Taylor, Kit Colville, Naomi Park, Will Bartlett and Cameron Slade

Fringe 2024 sell-out murder mystery comedy musical! Detective Ben Stone is murdered at his own birthday party, snuffed out like a candle on a cake. Five suspects have means, motive and opportunity, but with Stone lying stone dead, sleuth Molly Evans must take on the investigation… watch as the ever more ridiculous motives of the suspects are uncovered one by one – until the killer is finally revealed…

It’s time for fringe previews! An important caveat to this review is that the show technically isn’t in its final stages just yet - as it only officially ‘opens’ once it has reached Edinburgh in a few weeks! 

The Detective’s Demise is a murder mystery musical (because we always need more of those, hooray) set at the 25th birthday party of Ben Stone. Young, professional… dead? This pre-retired detective has a hunch that one of his friends is, in fact, a foe, so he decides to set a trap to catch the killer. It all quickly backfires when he ends up actually deceased, and so new pal and super sleuth Molly Evans must take on the investigation and solve the case! But, can she do it without revealing a rather telling secret of her own…?

With a score akin to the likes of Operation Mincemeat, Michael Rincon & Tom Rolph have devised some really fun songs clearly written to showcase the talents of a diverse cast. They are well distributed throughout the hour-long performance, and are often the only device used to keep up the pace of the production. 

Nora Shields is a talented rapper but seemed to fumble over a few of the lyrics which is a shame as they were so wacky and witty. Naturally, you can appreciate that a preview is not the final product but it does need to be audience ready for public performances and this just didn’t quite feel up to scratch. In the same sense, the choreography by Hermione Lester was absolutely solid as content, but so clearly not made for the space meaning it didn’t work anywhere nearly as well as it had the potential to. 

Every character was recognisable which is arguably necessary for a comedic piece like this - however some of the archetypes were conveyed solely through repetitive jokes and quips which became more predictable than funny. In a similar breath, there were plenty of nods to other musicals such as Crazy for You and Chicago, and the antagonist was what I would imagine to be a combination of Colonel Bevan and Sally Bowles; however these references were easy to miss and could have been better platformed by more creative and clever musical choices to accompany them.

For the most part, all set and props were well managed and the script itself was funny - a premise definitely deserving of further exploration with a more experienced cast and creative team.