SIX actors set out with a whodunnit – think Miss Marple meets Poirot – but only two actually get to the venue … how can they put on a show with no props or sets? The scene is set for comic mayhem as Company Gavin Robertson brings Done to Death, By Jove! to Yetminster’s Jubilee Hall on Saturday 10th February and Shillingstone’s Portman Hall on Sunday 11th, with Artsreach.

Created and performed by Gavin Robertson and Nicholas Collett, Done to Death, By Jove! is obviously a case of the British detective genre gone wrong, and the actors are looking to the two communities to try to solve the mystery …

Some of the most famous characters from detective fiction, including Holmes and Watson, and Poirot and Miss Marple – and what are rather sweetly described as “the usual suspects” – are all recruited to play their part in a spoof homage to the British Detective Genre. Who murdered Lady Fanshawe? Why is Matron Maudesly so friendly with one of the guests at the Clinic of Hopes and Cures? Why have the sound cues got mixed up?

Originally there was supposed to be a cast of six bringing a group of suspects and sleuths together to discover whodunnit, but now four are stuck in the van by the side of the motorway, and only two have managed to get to the venue. Still, ‘the show must go on’!

This farcical comedy is packed with clichés from the detective genre, with lords and ladies, shady servants, secrets, motives and cunning detective-work. Expect a whirlwind of fast costume changes, clumsy direction and acting hiccups in a show where even the set’s gone missing!