Review of Picture You Dead at Milton Keynes Theatre

The Peter James franchise featuring the detective Roy Grace has become quite the juggernaut of success since his first appearance in 2005 in James's novel Dead Simple. With 21 published books, a popular TV series starring John Simm, now in its fifth series, and this, Picture You Dead, the seventh stage play adaptation, now running at Milton Keynes Theatre, there appears to be no stopping him.

The plot of Picture You Dead begins with a down-on-their-luck couple, Harry and Freya Kipling, discovering a potential 200-year-old masterpiece at a car boot sale. The discovery leads them into the path of both a reformed forger, Dave Hegarty, an unscrupulous collector, Oliver De Souza and his assistant Roberta Kilgore and of course, detectives Roy Grace and Bella Moy in pursuit of a cold case which may link them all?

Having seen two previous adaptations, I wanted to see if they had gotten beyond the slightly simplistic and television-style of telling the story, now that they were reaching the lucky seventh production. The answer in most cases is no; however, the fact that this is a seventh one, much like a rather raggid cobble together jukebox musical filling the theatre, means that they have a formula that works, so why change it?

Both the storytelling and production are still excellent. Once again, James' story is full of nibbles of information and clues that get the audience talking at the interval. Is this key to the solution? Is that going to be important? Shaun McKenna's adaptation leaves the interval falling perfectly for all these potential clues to be in place.

It also helps that designer Adrian Linford's set is a brilliant construction, cleverly allowing all locations to be on stage simultaneously. Jason Taylor's lighting design calls the shots of where our eyes should be moving as audience members. Even Jonathan O'Boyle's direction of scenes is inventive, allowing the pace never to drop and leaving little drips of information and foreshadowing of scenes to come to dwell in the background. Where does it all go wrong to make this a sort of average production?

Well, the clues are there, of course, with no mention of the cast after five paragraphs. There are some performances to admire, such as Peter Ash's superb and charming forger Hegarty, who is willing to get in trouble just once more with a fake or maybe two. Also, Nicholas Maude is gloriously flamboyant as collector Piper, chewing the scenery of his masterpiece-laden den.

Elsewhere, there are lightweight performances from Fiona Wade and Ben Cutler as the Kiplings. Seemingly going through the motions as a somewhat uninteresting married couple who fall into the story by luck.

Sadly, also the main character, Roy Grace, is left lingering on the story's edges, mostly just a walk-on with his assistant Moy. This character building, or lack thereof, leaves George Rainsford, as Grace, very little to do and lacking in energy for the role in what should be his show as the conquering detective.

Elsewhere, Jodie Steel overplays everything about the Roberta Kilgore character, making it unbelievable and unmenacing. Fight and torture scenes also miss the target, often taking away what little tension the production might have.

Picture You Dead is such a missed bag that it is hard to recommend, even though I enjoyed the story, albeit a little silly and predictable at times. This could have been a brilliant show with a bit of sharpening up of the characters and more development. However, as it stands, it is just a little average, and not a good enough "deep fake" to convince.

Slightly flat and mixed performances let down a clever, inventive, well-presented crime drama.
⭐⭐⭐

Performance reviewed: Tuesday, 6th May 2025, at the Milton Keynes Theatre.

Picture You Dead is at Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, 10th May 2025.

For details of the Picture You Dead tour, see writer Peter James's website at https://www.peterjames.com/plays/picture-you-dead/

For further details about Milton Keynes, see their website at http://www.atgtickets.com/venues/milton-keynes-theatre/

Production photos: Alistair Muir