Adapting Inspector Morse for the stage was always going to be a high-wire act. John Thaw’s portrayal is not merely iconic; it is definitive. Inspector Morse: House of Ghosts, now playing in Cardiff, proceeds as if that were both its greatest asset and its biggest problem, and never quite works out which it is.
Tom Chambers approaches Morse with diligence and polish, but the performance flirts dangerously with impersonation. The familiar stoop, the pained silences, the gruff delivery are all carefully in place, yet rather than inhabiting the role, Chambers often seems to be tracing it. The result is a Morse who feels less like a living character than a very good memory of one.
If the central performance struggles to escape its predecessor, the plot actively works against itself. What starts as a suspicious death inquiry quickly descends into an over-engineered tangle of past sins, theatrical rivalries and delayed revelations. Dates are dropped into the dialogue with all the subtlety of a police file slapped on the table, and from that point on the broad shape of the solution becomes fairly obvious.
It is nifty having the show begin with us the audience being the audience watching a performance of Hamlet. However, I know from some of the annoying chattering in the audience some people were slightly baffled, judging by how they were explaining to each other what they thought was happening.
The final explanation braids together several strands that probably individually make sense, but collectively leave us with a tangled and slightly mystifying conclusion. Some elements are over-signposted, while others remain bafflingly opaque. We are told, for example, that something of importance was being sought in Hamlet’s dressing room. But what that something actually was, and why it mattered, is never satisfactorily clarified. Similarly, supposedly crucial information (Ophelia’s gloves being the prime offender) is tossed out almost in passing, perilously close to the end, as though clarity were an optional extra. We also have Morse and Lewis still discussing what had happened and why as the play comes to an end.
The decision to stage two simultaneous denouements, one in the police station, another in the theatre, only compounds the confusion. Instead of a satisfying unravelling, the ending feels like a competition between explanations, neither of which is allowed the time or space to fully land.
The staging itself is cleverly functional: back projections and rotating props shuffle us briskly between locations, but do little to illuminate the increasingly convoluted narrative. The ensemble cast does what it can with characters who all come equipped with dark secrets but not enough dramatic oxygen. Robert Mountford gamely doubles roles, while Teresa Banham as old flame Ellen, Charlotte Randle as Verity, Spin Glancy as a nervy Hamlet and James Gladdon as Freddy circle the mystery without ever quite sharpening it.
The nods to Morse’s love of classical music and crosswords, plus his ale, are warmly received, and the chemistry between Chambers and Tachia Newall’s DS Lewis (above) is reassuringly familiar. In truth, it’s Morse and Lewis we have come for and so the plot is almost incidental.
Yet that’s rather the problem. When vital clues are buried until the end, other elements are pretty obvious, motivations muddled and revelations rushed, even nostalgia cannot paper over the cracks.
House of Ghosts was written in 2010 by Alma Cullen, who, along with Anthony Minghella and Danny Boyle, was one of the original writers on the Inspector Morse TV show when it premiered in 1987. Cullen’s play enjoyed a small tour and a Radio 4 broadcast, but the UK tour marks the first major production of the first-ever Morse story on stage.
Until January 31
Tom Chambers on playing Morse:
