KEY POINTS:
If you love old-fashioned whodunit mysteries and TV comedies like Mr Bean and Are you Being Served? then you'll take to Murder by Chocolate like warm milk to cocoa.
Quaint and campy, Murder by Chocolate tells the story of romance novelist Felicity Fargo, who wants to trade commercial success for critical acclaim by leaving behind romance for the hard-boiled world of crime novels.
But her plans are stymied by her overbearing mother, celebrity chef Margo Fargo, who plans to publish a tell-all memoir in the same year.
Murder and mayhem ensue when a killer uses the plot of Felicity's unpublished book as a recipe for death and the rest of the cast of eccentric grotesqueries are killed off one by one.
Murder by Chocolate was written and performed by Alex Ellis and Phil Ormsby, who are also the founders of Flaxworks, the Tauranga-based theatre company that produced this play and one other production, Biscuit & Coffee.
They obviously have talent as both performers and writers. In Murder by Chocolate, Alex brings humour and energy to her role of Felicity while Phil shows off his range in a series of crazy character changes.
There is some amusing word-play in Murder by Chocolate and a middle-of-the-road audience looking for a light evening out will find plenty to amuse. But I was disappointed that two talented people would squander their skill on such insubstantial and old-fashioned entertainment.
The show is over-long and needs more bite to be a successful parody. The characters are one dimensional and the plot gets swamped in a series of chocolate-inspired puns and mild sexual innuendo that belong in a BBC comedy circa 1970.
Romance and whodunit are two genres crying out for an over-the-top aesthetic but this production plays it safe with a simple set and costumes in a monochromatic palate of black, white and grey.
No set designer is credited in the programme, which I guess is unsurprising given the set consists of a window frame, a door frame and a large desk with chair.
It is a shame, because the desk's secret stash of chocolate treats is quite a scene stealer.
Ben Hambling's lighting had a few impactful moments, such as the creepy shafts of light in the visit to the murder scene, but elsewhere I felt he let himself down with obvious colour choices such as the sickly green used for the "voices from beyond the grave".
Murder by Chocolate will probably do great business on its national tour of New Zealand, proving that light entertainment rules the middle of the road and fans of this type of show can console themselves with the thought that reviewers are just cynical meanies with bitter streaks darker than 70 per cent Ghana chocolate.
