Picture You Dead UK Tour Review (Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield)

05 June 2025 I 19:30 I Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield

⭐

In the latest installation of Peter James' anthology series to be adapted for stage, Picture You Dead is another highly acclaimed production, often hailed as a thrilling and intense play. Conversely to critical opinion, Jonathan O'Boyle's direction is tonally unsettled, enduring a frightfully soulless show that fails to deliver in jeopardy and suspense. As DSI Roy Grace follows a murderous trail centred around a priceless painting, the curse of the murder-mystery has struck once more.

One of the clearest signifiers for an audience is when performers lack confidence and assurance. From the moment the curtain rises, the theatrical genre is so unfamiliar, with actors including Fiona Wade adhering to a comedic melodrama within a heavily realist set, others opting for subtlety and precision. With a script adapted by Shaun McKenna, an imbalance of style results in intendedly chilling lines turning laughable in their displacement.

To Adrian Linford's expansive set design, the visual grandiosity must be applauded, combining a modest lounge, mansion gallery and painting studio in a collision of private lives. The vision is intelligent, although a static set turns progressively lifeless, forcing samey blocking to become trapped in the same pattern. Alongside blackouts with every transition, the pacing swiftly becomes formulaic and uninteresting.

Within a sea of greatly varying performances, Jodie Steele's Roberta Kilgore carries the momentum of show, given the material. Her immersion into the role and carefully menacing vocality provide fleeting tensions, lifting the piece towards something redeemable. Likewise, Mark Oxtoby's performance as copyist Dave Hegarty is charming and rightfully humorous, finding the complexities within the character to realise what's at stake.

With high expectations of Ore Oduba's performance, his authoritative role as Stuart Piper is heavily minimised due to comic, unserious artistic choices. In arguably the most substantial, pivotal moment of the narrative, Oduba's farcical staging causes audiences to erupt into ill-fitting bursts of laughter, uncertain whether I should chuckle or cringe through the scene.

McKenna's script, despite the genre, fails to maintain any sense of mystery in a nonsensical narrative. Unforgettably, one moment sees a diabetic character's life hanging in the balance, with a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts bargained to keep her alive. There is something bizarrely entertaining about these scenes, finding them hilarious for the wrong reasons.

Picture You Dead, despite immense potential, is a highly predictable and tedious imagining of Peter James' novel, entirely dissipating the purpose of a thriller. Beginning with a clever pre-show announcement and bloodied stage curtain, these features become the highlight of the evening before an abysmally uncoordinated production.