Festival Theatre, Edinburgh
Three stars
A night at the theatre never quite works out as planned if you are Inspector Morse. So it goes with what thus far remains the sole stage play drawn from characters created by the late Colin Dexter’s series of thirteen novels based around the man who went became telly’s most cultured copper in the small screen adaptations made between 1987 and 2000.
House of Ghosts was scripted by Alma Cullen, the Liverpool born Edinburgh émigré who penned four episodes of Morse’s TV adventures. Her original play first appeared in 2010, around the same time she was writing some of her final works for the Oran Mor based A Play, a Pie and a Pint lunchtime theatre initiative in Glasgow.
As a theatre writer immersed in Morse’s DNA, Cullen sets her play on the stage, where a co production of Hamlet acts as the prologue to what turns out to be an accidental Oxford University reunion between Morse and his peers. While he signed up with the police after graduating twenty-five years earlier, his assorted friends, rivals and unrequited crushes all seem to have joined either the theatre or the church.
This three-way split of performative professions becomes the perfect backdrop to a slow burning mystery after the young starlet playing Hamlet’s neglected other half dies on stage. While repeating the fate of Ophelia, actress Rebecca also has a shared past with those on and off stage that looks more worthy of Greek tragedy than Shakespeare. Those in her orbit include Jason Done’s hyperbolic theatre director Lawrence, her unseen Irish mother, and Teresa Banham’s company member Ellen. Morse has history with all of them, even attempting to rekindle an awkward flame with Ellen.
With Tom Chambers picking up John Thaw’s mantle as Morse in this 1980s set affair, Anthony Banks’ production is a mix of plot driven busyness and a quasi Proustian step back in time for Morse as some of his early days are revealed. Throw in Charlotte Randle’s hammy actress Verity propping up the bar with Morse and his trusty sidekick Lewis, played by Tachia Newall, and designer Colin Richmond’s back to front stage set is a suitably dramatic place to be. As for Morse himself, once he’s sorted out the shocking consequences of the collective past he inadvertently unearthed, he has his pint, the crossword and a lot of classical music to get him through in a faithful rendering of a much loved character given a new lease of life for diehards.
The Herald, March 5th 2026
ends
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