Following its premiere at Theatre Royal Bath in August 2021, award-winning company New Old Friends return to touring with the latest instalment of their ever-popular Crimes… series – Crimes, Camera, Action.
Inspired by the classic English writing of Agatha Christie, Noël Coward and PG Wodehouse, the madcap comedy thrillers have so far seen the company head to locations as varied as the English Riviera, Siberian railways and the banks of the Nile.
This time, they’re in Golden-era Hollywood bringing in the world of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett with a slippery, hilarious case ready and waiting to be solved.
When an accidental stabbing of a movie star occurs on set, it sets in motion a bizarre chain of increasingly unfathomable events. Paying respectful, yet playful, homage to Humphrey Bogart, the latest creation by New Old Friends is every bit as energetic, inventive and amusing as the previous offerings in the series.
A cast of just four actors will again tackle multiple roles – sometimes within the same scene – bringing the full force of New Old Friend’s talent for skillfully ramshackle comedy to the stage.
Feargus Woods Dunlop from New Old Friends said “We couldn’t be happier to be returning to touring after the Covid shutdown at Theatre Royal Bath, a venue which has supported us from day one. We have always loved Film-Noir and knew we wanted to take the Crimes… series into a slightly new world to give us fresh tropes to play with and new landscapes to create nonsense in. There is a slightly different structure to a Hollywood private-eye story than an English cosy-crime one and that has been great fun to explore. We are very excited to present this fresh spin on the popular series.”
New Old Friends are an award-winning theatre company dedicated to creating original comedy theatre, founded in 2008 and run by husband and wife team Feargus Woods Dunlop and Heather Westwell. Most recently, they staged festive farce A Christmas Getaway at Theatre Royal Bath (December 2021) which was highlighted as one of inews’ Top Christmas shows for 2021.
2020 saw New Old Friends release the first in a new audio drama series Comedy Whodunnits For Your Ears, with Crimes Against Christmas (OnComm Award winner) charting at #2 in the Apple iTunes Fiction chart and inside the top 200 overall podcast charts as well as featuring on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row. Recent instalments also include Crimes, Clues and Christmas, Crimes on Centre Court and Crimes of a Country Garden as well as an Autumn regional tour of Crimes in Egypt.
In 2017 and 2018 New Old Friends were awarded the Creative Bath Award for writing. Previous shows also include five instalments of the hugely popular Crimes… series of comedy thrillers. In summer 2019, their adaptation of Anthony Horowitz’ The Falcon’s Malteser enjoyed a six-week run at London’s Vaults Theatre. It was selected as a ‘Critic’s Choice’ for ‘Best Family Shows’ by the Guardian. Their latest adaptation for families, Swiss Family Robinson (Top 40 Christmas shows 2019, inews) premiered at The Core at Corby Cube in 2019.
