Dead Guilty

Gripping Nineties Suspense

Dead Guilty

by Richard Harris

Take Note Theatre at the Tabard Theatre, Chiswick until 27^th June

Review by Andrew Lawston

We’re back to the mid-90s at Chiswick’s Tabard Theatre tonight, in the house of Julia, a freelance graphic designer from the days when cutting and pasting still meant exactly that, despite the equally nostalgic chunky computer monitor on the desk.

Julia has recently been in a car crash, after her employer John Haddrell suffered a fatal heart attack at the wheel. She is convalescing, undergoing various operations on her leg while working from home. She’s visited by Gary, a young local man who cleans and gardens for her (Julia’s “Daily Male”), as well as by Anne, her counsellor. In pain, depressed, and irritable, Julia mostly just wants to be left alone, as anyone who’s ever worked from home can surely appreciate at the best of times, but there is a particularly nervous edge to her irritation.

It emerges that John Haddrell’s widow has written to Julia, asking to meet her as she tries to process her bereavement. Anne advises caution, but the next thing we know, Julia is having an awkward cup of tea with the charming but brittle Margaret Haddrell.

As Julia and Margaret strike up an unlikely friendship, Gary becomes increasingly jealous and defensive. And as trivial but peculiar events begin to pile up, it gradually becomes clear that all of these characters have secrets, and that one of them is not what they seem.

Richard Harris’s thriller is intricately crafted, and further elevated by superb performances from a first rate cast. Charlotte Hunter leads the cast as Julia, a compelling portrayal of an independent woman who clearly resents being forced to rely on others due to her injuries. Julia is fragile, in pain from her injured leg throughout the play, and having undergone significant mental trauma as a result of the accident. But it’s also clear that she’s not used to being so delicate, and is constantly frustrated at her powerlessness. Hunter pulls off the demanding task of portraying a character who is often called upon to smile politely, but who is visibly seething inside.

Freddie Webster gives a terrifyingly proficient performance as Gary, turning on a sixpence from the cheerful chappie with a clear crush on his employer, to a much darker, possessive, and troubling character. As the only male actor in the cast, Webster’s physicality imposes on the other actors whenever Gary is riled, and his character appears truly unpredictable.

Gary first shows us his darker side as he confronts Anne in the opening scene, telling her that she shouldn’t visit Julia. Anne is played by Julia Faulkner with great delicacy. Anne is a consummate professional who clearly truly cares about her patients, and she appears to relish Julia’s deflections and verbal jousting.

And then there is Felicity Duncan’s Margaret. Margaret is John Haddrell’s widow; a former nurse, apparently obsessed with flowers. Duncan has to play perhaps the widest range throughout the play, from grieving widow to attentive best friend, with flashes of real anger at the unexpected loss of her beloved husband.

Like most thrillers, Dead Guilty thrives on misdirection, setting up conflicts between each of the characters until both the characters and the audience have no idea who to believe or trust. Director Nick Bromley keeps the action moving at pace, his main flourishes being occasional swells of ominous music to draw the audience’s attention to significant events, events whose significance the characters often seem to ignore.

The set designed by Rob Miles is a wonderfully-detailed evocation of a mid-90s living room and home office, full of untidy desks, blocky computer monitors, mini-stereo systems and answerphones. A copy of The Face lies under a coffee table, emblazoned with Kylie Minogue’s face. A flowering garden can be glimpsed through the French window, and the front door offers a similarly green view. Before the start of the play, most of the audience were engrossed in studying every detail of the set, and the light that streams through the windows courtesy of Nat Green is always thoroughly consistent with the time of day. It truly feels as though we’re in Julia’s living room.

The highly realistic set complements the play’s psychologically real characters, and helps the audience swallow some of the less naturalistic plot elements that creep in as the drama accelerates. We don’t always get the tidy, neat answers to some of the characters’ quirks, though many of them are strongly implied. Dead Guilty is a gripping and intricately crafted thriller full of fascinating and complex characters, which is frequently very funny, and which keeps the audience guessing until the very end.

Andrew Lawston, June 2026

Photography by Felix Hall Close