There’s a particular kind of disappointment reserved for bad stage adaptations of bestselling novels. Picture You Dead, based on one of Peter James’ popular Roy Grace thrillers, arrives buoyed by commercial success. You might expect it to be at least competent. Instead, Shaun McKenna’s script, under Jonathan O’Boyle’s direction, delivers a chaotic, tone-deaf mess: inconsistently pitched, sloppily staged and so poorly acted it borders on unbelievable.
The plot has potential. A Brighton couple buys a grimy painting at a car boot sale that may be a lost Fragonard. Soon, they’re pulled into a murky world of forgeries, ruthless collectors and buried crimes. DSI Roy Grace (George Rainsford) and DS Bella Moy (Gemma Stroyan) reopen a cold case linked to the painting. There are attempted murders, tense phone calls and plenty of backstory – but rather than letting the intrigue unfold, the play spells out every twist with clunky obviousness.
It’s difficult to know where to start, but perhaps the most glaring issue is the acting. It’s not that the cast lacks ability – it’s that they’ve been directed with such wildly inconsistent tone that it’s hard to tell what kind of show anyone thought they were in. Performances veer from naturalistic to pantomimic within the space of a single scene.
Rainsford’s Roy Grace is oddly muted – too wooden to project authority, too passive to anchor the play. His scenes with Stroyan rely on clichéd police banter (“Let’s crack this wide open!”), doing neither actor any favours.
Even the supposedly ‘relatable’ central couple, Freya (Fiona Wade) and Harry (Ben Cutler), come across as flat and awkwardly drawn. Their banter lacks charm and their sudden lurch into melodrama when things turn dark never feels earned.
Characters like Stuart Piper (Ore Oduba) and Roberta Kilgore (Jodie Steele) are played so broadly and so absurdly that any remaining credibility collapses. Their choreographed violence is so poorly executed it borders on farce – slow, visibly pulled punches and laughably telegraphed moves that kill any tension dead. There are Scooby-Doo villains with more menace and more character development. The longer you watch, the more you find yourself asking: is this really a crime thriller or is it a parody so unfunny that no one realised it was meant to be a joke?
Then there are the accents. Nearly every character sports a baffling, inconsistent regional voice. One supposedly Brighton-based figure sounds more like a Victorian street urchin than a modern day suspect. It’s grating and emblematic of a wider tonal confusion – some scenes verge on farce, others are played with such straight-faced solemnity they become unintentionally comic.
The script doesn’t so much unravel a mystery as spoon-feed it to the audience at every turn. Characters constantly explain what just happened or what’s about to, robbing the few twists of any tension or surprise. It’s as if the production doesn’t trust its audience to follow a single breadcrumb without someone pointing directly at it and yelling, “LOOK, A CLUE!”
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Set and design elements – by Adrian Linford and Jason Taylor – do their best to hold things together. Transitions between locations are handled with some efficiency, and Max Pappenheim’s sound design occasionally injects a sense of atmosphere that the performances can’t quite muster. But none of these technical efforts are enough to disguise the fact that the show simply doesn’t work.
Peter James has a loyal fanbase and the (rather small) Birmingham opening-night crowd seemed patient, if not exactly enthused. But anyone hoping for passable crime drama is likely to come away disappointed. Picture You Dead is neither stylish enough to be noir nor bold enough to be parody. It flounders in between – neither suspenseful nor fun, just baffling.
Picture You Dead, The Alexandra, Birmingham
Novelist: Peter James
Stage Adaptor: Shaun McKenna
Director: Jonathan O’Boyle
Artworks: David Henty
Designer: Adrian Linford
Lighting Designer: Jason Taylor
Composer and Sound Designer: Max Pappenheim
Cast: Ben Cutler, Fiona Wade, Mark Oxtoby, George Rainsford, Gemma Stroyan, Adam Morris, Jodie Steele, Ore Oduba, Sean Jones, Valentina Arena, Ross Telfer
Picture You Dead will be performed until 28 June 2025 before touring to Cornwall, Bradford, Worthing and Westcliff-On-Sea.
