Hayton on Homicide

"Put this in your diary"

Hayton on Homicide , a new play by JM Golder, is set in Cambridge in the nineteenth century and explores the lives of George (Robert Jezek) and Florence Hayton (Sarah Kenyon), a crime detector and his wife, fascinated with the supernatural elements mysteriously appearing in the neighbour hood. When Alice Kentwell (Elizabeth Muncey) is troubled by some unexplained events, both Hayton's explore their inner fears to get to the bottom of the mystery.

The script was beautifully written, JM Golder does well to get the classic upper class English speech, and the direction allows the dialogue to flow very poetically; lyrically. The problem comes in the scene changes; clumpy and unnecessary they slump the flow of dialogue and allow the tension to drop through the piece. This was my main problem with the production, which was otherwise very stylishly performed and produced. The ensemble worked very effectively together, with some great physical moments employed well by the director to explore the darker elements of the play.

At times some of the performances did feel too big for the intimate space. Adapting the style for the smaller audience would be a good place to further the audience's engagement in the piece. This would allow the horror elements of the piece to organically come about, as opposed to feeling slightly contrived and imposed upon the audience.

The cast did wonderfully, and the script is exciting and sound. Well worth a visit, put this play in your diary

— David Hutchison - Remotegoat

We are in M. R. James territory with this enjoyable piece in which Hayton, a Cambridge don, finds his rationalist beliefs challenged by a series of bizarre events.

He patronises and even bullies his loquacious wife, expressing all the contempt of an 1883 male intellectual for the capacities of the female intelligence.

Yet it is Florence who again and again displays more insight into the situation and even has a better grasp of the complex facts. She is, in most of the ways that matter, simply cleverer than him. 

Weird things are happening to their friends and neighbours, the Kentwells: ghostly hauntings, a visit from a medium who knows far more about them than she should, hallucinatory experiences, etc. Gradually a complicated back-story emerges of scientific ambition, murder, deception, and drug-addiction and inevitably it leads to another act of violence. 

The play teeters just the right side of camp and rattles along with witty dialogue that raises issues like female emancipation, the advance of science, and the existence of paranormal powers in an amusing manner. Hayton is superbly played by Robert Jezek – all pomposity and pedantry - and Sarah Kenyon as Florence is almost as good.

 The authors, Michelle Golder with assistance from Robert Jezek, have constructed a clever narrative with plenty of surprises along the way.

There is a little too much backstory to be unravelled and the abrupt ending, though a nice surprise, left a few more loose threads than your (perhaps slow-witted) reviewer was able to tie up.

If you love Sherlock Holmes but wish his creator had taken him a little less seriously, you’ll enjoy this.

— Charles Palliser - Fringe Review 

Tychy@The Fringe

This evening I made it to a late showing of Hayton on Homicide, a new play by Michelle Golder about a Victorian sceptic, Professor George Hayton (Robert Jezek), who attempts to find a rational explanation for a mysterious murder and, in doing so, put to bed the supernatural solutions offered by his wife Florence (Sarah Kenyon). I was a little turned off by this play at first – it seemed like Victorian twits prancing about in top hats and bumbling over the brandy – but it gradually emerges as a smartly written and deftly performed entertainment. The play bares its teeth fully in a surprising and striking hallucination scene, but the most endearing feature is the to-and-fro between Hayton, the paternalistic man of science, and his chirpy wife, who freely dissents from scientific wisdom.

The premise of Hayton on Homicide will be assuredly familiar: the sceptic is, it transpires, blinded by his faith in reason (“prejudiced against anything that you don’t understand,” as his wife puts it), whilst the supernaturalist is not as foolish and credulous as one may assume. Yet the novelty of the play lies in casting two ideological adversaries – reason and superstition – as an affectionately quarrelsome husband and wife and, whilst they will never see eye-to-eye, both will save face and claim points of victory. There should be a general moratorium on detectives in contemporary culture – they get ever more tiresome – but Hayton and his sidekick-wife show a good deal of promise as personalities in this field, and one hopes that they feature again in further adventures.

— Tychy http://tychy.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/tychy-the-fringe-hayton-on-homicide/