After the death of the first Mrs Kent who had psychiatric issues, Samuel married Mary Pratt (Connie Walker) his children’s nanny. Constance and her brother William (Sam Liu) are children from Samuel Saville Kent (Jim Creighton)’s first marriage. The play jumps in and out of time but I had no trouble following the trail. Mr Whicher (Christopher Naylor) is troubled by this case as to why Constance confessed when he has doubts as to her guilt. In 1881 Constance is visited by the detective responsible for her case who is about to retire. She confessed to the child’s murder in 1865 and was initially sentenced to death but she was reprieved and sentenced instead to life imprisonment.Īlexandra Wood’s adaptation of Kate Summerscale’s best selling 2008 book, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective, I understand adheres to the original. She is now in Fulham Prison but has been in prison in Battersea and Milbank as well. The opening scene takes place in 1881 where Constance Kent (Eleanor Wyld) has been in prison for 16 years. The murderer had to be one of the adults inside the house, Saville’s father, mother, step sister, stepbrother or the nursery maid. Readers love good crime fiction and theatre goers are no exception but The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is about the true crime of the murder of a three year old boy Francis Saville Kent in 1860.
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