The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

Kate Summerscale

Summary

Summer 1860, an elegant country house, a young boy is found dead in an outside privy. All clues point towards the murderer being a member of the grieving household.
Called to the scene is the most celebrated detective of his day, Jonathan Whicher from Scotland Yard. But this case challenges him in ways he's never been challenged before.
Over twenty years later, still haunted by the case, Whicher visits the murderer. As they replay the past, they start to question the nature of truth, the desire for certainty and the possibility of redemption.
This compelling stage adaptation of Kate Summerscale's gripping bestseller opened at The Watermill Theatre, Newbury, in May 2023.
This ensemble piece provides rich opportunities for companies looking to intrigue their audiences with a fresh take on a dark Victorian mystery.

Available since: 05/11/2023.

Print length: 72 pages.

Poetry & Theatre

Other books that might interest you

Field Music - Poems

Anonymous

A collection of poetry from the 2019 winner of the National Poetry Series, selected by Rosanna Warren  
In her remarkable and assured debut, Alexandria Hall explores the boundaries and limits of language, place, and the self, as well as the complicated space between safety and danger, intimacy and isolation, playfulness and seriousness, home and away. With a keen eye for the importance of place, Hall shows us daily life in rural Vermont, illuminating the beauty and difficulty inherent in the dichotomies of human language and experience. 
Incisive and tender, Field Music is a thoughtful and alert collection from a major emerging voice.

Show book

All Day I Dream About Sirens

Domenica Martinello

From Homer to Starbucks, a look at sirens and mermaids and feminism and consumerism.
   
What started as a small sequence of poems about the Starbucks logo grew to monstrous proportions after the poet fell under a siren spell herself.  All Day I Dream About Sirens  is both an ancient reverie and a screen-induced stupor as these poems reckon with the enduring cultural fascination with siren and mermaid narratives as they span geographies, economies, and generations, chronicling and reconfiguring the male-centered epic and women's bodies and subjectivities. 
"It's a marvel!" – Matthea Harvey

Show book

Bé Carna

Deirdre Kinahan

Five women reflect on their lives as prostitutes on the streets of Dublin.
Deirdre Kinahan's short play Bé Carna: Women of the Flesh is a dark tale inspired by true-life stories, reverberating with humanity, warmth and comic humour.
It was first staged by Tall Tales theatre company at Andrews Lane Theatre, Dublin, in 1999.

Show book

Where The Crawfish Swim -...

Andrea Smith

It’s 2016, and Dalton Edwards is tasked with fitting in with the locals in Briarton, Ohio. There’s something going on in this rural, sleepy county of only 28,000 people, and his higher-ups want Dalton to uncover it. Easier said than done! 
Dalton immediately discovers the community is tight-knit, and not easily infiltrated. His boss says it’s a pot-growing operation, but Dalton thinks it’s much bigger than that. Before his assignment is over, eight family members are murdered under circumstances that Dalton knows have nothing to do with a hydroponic weed operation or a custody dispute. 
As the mass murder makes international news, Dalton is determined to find the murderer (or murderers) and expose the guilty to seek justice for the slain. It won’t be easy, and in the end, one more local will perish. Dalton will not rest until those responsible are held accountable. 
*This novel is fictional, but based on true events that happened in Pike County, Ohio, in April of 2016. The names and locations have been fictionalized, and the conclusions contained in this work of fiction are purely a product of the author's imagination.

Show book

Obits

T. Liem

WINNER OF THE 2019 GERALD LAMPERT MEMORIAL AWARD 
Can poems mourn the unmourned? In Obits. a speaker tries and fails to write obituaries for those whose memorials are missing, those who are represented only as statistics. She considers victims of mass deaths, fictional characters, and her own aunt, asking what does it mean to be an 'I' mourning a 'you' when both have been othered? Centring vulnerability, the various answers to this question pass through trauma, depression, and the experience of being a mixed-race queer woman.

Show book

I Will Get Up Off Of - Why We...

Simina Banu

Overthinking simple actions leads to overwhelming poems about what one can lean on if promised help doesn’t help
I Will Get Up Off Of is a book about trying to leave a chair. How does anyone ever leave a chair? There are so many muscles involved – so many tarot cards, coats, meds, McNuggets, and memes. In this book, poems are attempts and failures at movement as the speaker navigates her anxiety and depression in whatever way she can, looking for hope from social workers on Zoom, wellness influencers, and psychics alike. Eventually, the poems explode in frustration, splintering into various art forms as attempts at expression become more and more desperate. What is there to lean on when avenues promising help don’t help? Bell may want to #talk but does it want to listen? I Will Get Up Off Of explores the role art plays in survival and the hope that underlies every creative impulse.
"The voice of these poems moves like a magical fish trapped in a small square bowl, dazzlingly alive inside an almost annihilating constriction. These poems play a serious game in a tight space, caught in the looping limbo between intention — 'I will…' 'I will…', 'I will…'— and action. Simina Banu’s skill and humour animate every line and gesture within this inventive drama that begins '(I will get up off of) this monobloc but I’ve been sentenced…' Sentenced to form and to language, Banu gives us a mind thinking its way toward freedom." – Damian Rogers, author of Dear Leader

Show book