WHODUNNIT AT THE COLISEUM (Oldham Coliseum)*****

 

  

By Arran

Link: https://www.coliseum.org.uk/shows/whodunnit-at-the-coliseum-3601ab

Available until: 25^th April. You’ll receive a link when you book. It becomes active on your chosen date and remains active for 48 hours.

Whodunnit at the Coliseum is an interactive murder mystery which is set in the Oldham Coliseum. You go through lots of different options and talk to the different characters and at the end you can decide who you think did the murder. At the end of your 48 hours access they send you a newspaper article about the murderer and you get to see if you were right.

I really enjoyed it. I don’t usually enjoy interactive experiences because I am scared of talking to strangers. I am scared of saying the wrong thing. Lots of people are kind and they talk to me to encourage me but I get even more anxious. With interactive experiences you can’t sit down and enjoy the play. You are supposed to say things.

Whodunnit is really special because I get to interact without talking. No one sees me. You just watch videos and click on options to decide what you want to say. You don’t have to think of things to say by yourself. The pressure was off and I loved working my way through the murder mystery and feeling really safe. I enjoyed pretending to talk to the characters and having a virtual tour of the theatre.

In Part 1 there is a video of the theatre and an usher called Shirley welcomes you to the theatre to their production of Macbeth. You have to decide things like if you’re sitting in the Stalls or the Dress Circle. I chose the Stalls. You go to the bar and you talk to people there and you also overhear other people talking. When you talk to people they say something to you then you have to choose from a list to decide what you want to say. Then you go to the Stalls and you see two people having a conversation. If you go to the Dress Circle you might see two different people having a conversation but maybe the conversation was filmed in both places.

If you have time you can go back and try the different options. I was going to come back to it but I think I got confused with the access because I thought I had 48 hours but I got the newspaper less than 24 hours after I first played the game. I think it would have been very interesting to play some more. As long as you haven’t sent your murder accusation you can go back and play with Whodunnit as much as you like.

In Part 2 you get to go to different rooms in the Oldham Coliseum. Some of the rooms have a suspect in and you get to interview them. Like before you have a list of questions to ask but I think this time you can ask all the questions. You just choose which order to ask them in. Some of the rooms have like a flashback of something that happened there before the murder.

At the end there is an option of making your accusation but you don’t have to do it then. You can play the game some more first.

Whodunnit is lots of fun. The story which was written by Alice Barber, Olivia Race and Claire-Marie Seddon and it is really good. Olivia Race is the director too and I think everything is really clear about who people are and I like how the scenes are set up. The characters are very different and they are interesting to talk to. They all have a motive for being the murderer and I don’t think any of them had an alibi so any of them could have done it. I’m not allowed to say who did it because that would spoil it and I don’t want to say anything about the characters either in case that tells you too much. It is better if you play the game yourself and have your own opinions.

It is really nice to see inside the Coliseum. It looks really beautiful. It is really special to see the inside of a theatre again. Victoria Brazier (who plays actor Grace Marple), Riana Duce (usher Shirley Morris), Chris Jack (audience member Stanley Brown), Mick Liversidge (critic Michael Holdsworth) and Claire-Marie Seddon (audience member Ethel Higgins) are the actors. I don’t want to say what their characters are like but they are all really good. I was a bit scared of one of them but they are a good character and I really liked all the others.

I think this is a really good idea and there are lots of different stories you could make up as murders so I hope the Oldham Coliseum does lots more and that they make it available online so people who live a long way away from Oldham or people who aren’t very good at talking can enjoy it too.