And they are off.

Frome's highly applauded local and multi-award winning theatre company has scored another hit.

Crimes, Camera Action is a comedy and mystery run, with a pun at every punchline and a stage coach full of jokes, parodies and ripping costumes.

Stan Shakespeare is the detective on the hunt for a murderer within a not-so-golden age of Hollywood, and all four of the troupe get a leading role as the super speed story unfolds. They are also the staging hands to their own creation and work incredible hard to make sure every bit is in the right place at the right time, for the right reveal, not so easy when in an nod to the film within a film of the first fatality, our detective requests a replay in slow motion, in reverse, speeded up and then played back. What great fun, and how difficult to pull off, but they do.

So our weary and movie-hating Shakespeare must follow the clues to a thrilling finale in this a new instalment of their crimes series.

But it doesn't really matter whodunnit, as a buzzing Merlin Theatre, which has had to order in more ice cream such was the popularity of the show, it is more a case of who didn't do it. Singing, dancing, toe tapping, lip tripping and frantic bonanza of laughs, japes and memorable ribbing of the sound crew.

New Old Friends aka Heather Westwell and Feargus Woods, are also we are told new parents, but having a newborn hasn't deterred them from taking this show on the road. A treat for regional theatre from Coventry to Margate, Leamington Spa to Hexham and all spots in-between, in a three month odyssey - Nub News was exhausted just by looking at the schedule.

But don't miss this chance to do a spot of detective work if you find a theatre showing Crimes, Camera Action near you. Details HERE:

advertisement

New shows at The Merlin all the time. Maybe not as rollicking good fun as this, which the Financial Times, in no stranger to puns in the review, said was " crammed to the gills with knife-sharp visual gags."

But shows that need support. For the rundown of things coming click HERE: keep local theatre alive.