South West performers Jan Phillips and Amanda Walker to star in comedy at Perth’s Stirling Theatre

Two performers hailing from the South West are set to take part in a Perth comedy production where crime is mixed in with a fair bit of idiocy. Former Harvey resident Jan Phillips and Australind Senior High School graduate Amanda Walker will star in WA writer and director Bob Charteris’ latest show Not A Clue, which will run at Innaloo’s Stirling Theatre in September. The performance follows a group of “some of the worst” amateur and professional detectives who arrive at an island castle off Scotland’s west coat in hopes of restoring their tarnished reputations. Things take a turn when their host reveals an impostor within the group and they are forced to re-enact trials they ruined as prosecution witnesses. Phillips plays Miss Delphinia Elgin-Marbles, a woman who claims to have helped police on many occasions but has done anything but. She was previously heavily involved in Bunbury’s theatre scene, working with the Bunbury Musical Comedy Group, Stark Raven and the Bunbury Repertory Club. “My most recent experience was at the New Lyric Theatre directing Humpty Dumpty: The Eggs Files, where I also made several of the costumes,” she said. “Sewing is a passion of mine and I have also made a few things for this role.” The part is a far cry from Phillips’ first acting role in 1997, when she was the back end of a cow in a production of Granny Get Your Gun. Walker will act alongside Phillips as one of the other tarnished detectives. Playwright Bob Charteris said the show was a mixture of comedy, drama and theatre-of-the-absurd. “It’s a fast-paced play that includes many red herrings and is full of awful puns, improbable characters and a plot with more holes than a fully matured Swiss cheese,” he said. “I wanted to try something completely different where the plot and characters are not what they seem and would keep the audience guessing right up until the end — just like many novels and TV shows featuring fictional detectives who are totally incompetent.” Charteris said the inspiration for the show came from his role as a murderer in a 2009 production of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, where a diverse group of characters arrive on an island. “Even then I thought it was a great subject to be parodied,” he said. Audiences are being promised a world of murder, theft, adultery and black pudding, all mixed in with “a fair amount of stupidity”. Not A Clue plays at the Stirling Theatre between September 15 and 30. Tickets can be purchased at trybooking.com/CDWVS.