MIDNIGHT MURDER AT HAMLINGTON HALL Comes to the Ensemble Theatre

Ensemble Theatre will present the world premiere of Mark Kilmurry and Jamie Oxenbould’s charming new comedy, Midnight Murder at Hamlington Hall, on from Friday 1st December 2023 to Sunday 14th January 2024. 

This holiday season, Artistic Director Mark Kilmurry and Ensemble favourite Oxenbould have teamed up once again to write a hilariously unruly play within a play set in the world of amateur theatre, directed by Kilmurry, and starring a cast of five including Oxenbould. 

It is the opening night of director-writer Shane Tweed’s new murder mystery, and the Middling Cove Players are buzzing with expectation, electricity, and nerves. Seven of the amateur theatre company’s cast are down with the dreaded lurgy, and only 2 hours remain until showtime.

Desperate to continue the long tradition of ‘the show must go on’, Shane, two of the remaining actors, and whoever else they can co-opt, must pitch in to get this play off the ground. Juggling nerves, props, and absurd miscasting, will they manage to pull it off? Or will everything go horribly, terribly, and awfully wrong? 

“Midnight Murder at Hamlington Hall is everything we’ve experienced for at least 43 years, all together on one evening,” said Mark Kilmurry. 

“Everything that could possibly go wrong does. The whole credo of the night is that ‘the show must go on’. Well, as we see in this play, sometimes perhaps it shouldn’t,” said Jamie Oxenbould. 

“Mark and I love the world of amateur theatre as a setting, because it’s a world of passionate, unexpected people, doing what they love, against all odds.”

The ensemble includes Toby Blome (Photograph 51), Ariadne Sgouros (Belvoir’s Scenes from the Climate Era), Eloise Snape (Griffin Theatre Co’s, Pony), Sam O’Sullivan (Boxing Day BBQ), and Jamie Oxenbould (Boxing Day BBQ).  

A very funny take on bad timing, incompetence, and sweet optimism, don’t miss this colourful finale to Ensemble’s 2023 season.