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Instigate Theatre Productions presents

A Stab in the Dark

Ten guests One island Seven deadly sins

Theatre · 2008 · Premiered — two productions

Ten guests are summoned to a remote island for a reunion. Their host, Helmut Kinderland, is found murdered — and everyone assembled has a reason to have done it. What begins as a country-house parlour game curdles into something colder: the guests, it emerges, were adopted for their rare blood types, and the man who took them in was never a father at all.

Structured around the seven deadly sins — each guest embodies a vice, and only the three virtuous survive — the play is an open homage to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and the comic ensemble mysteries Clue and Murder by Death, shot through with Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death. Slapstick, wordplay and graphic horror sit side by side; Hush, Little Baby recurs until it stops sounding like a lullaby.

The play premiered at Higher Ground as part of the 2008 Adelaide Fringe under director Toni Main, and was revived eight years later in Delton, Michigan, directed by Renae Feldpausch — a rare second life for an Australian Fringe work.

Together with Once Upon a Midnight, this play formed the body of work for which Alex received the Independent Arts Foundation Literature Award.

The Suspects

Every guest is guilty of something.

  • Helmut Kinderland

    played by James Aubrey

    The host — found murdered

  • Randal Devlin Scout

    played by Adam Willson

  • Myles Fletcher

    played by Andrew Crupi

  • Eleanor Grubb

    played by Bridget Walters

  • Isabella Virtue

    played by Tanya Kaploon

  • Jade Sloan

    played by Katherine Warner

  • Walter Crowley

    played by Martin Hissey

  • Lacey Crowley

    played by Maya Aleksandra

  • Sheila Hunt

    played by Stephanie Pinnock

  • Maverick Horne

    played by Alec Hall

The Stagings

  1. The premiere

    Higher Ground, Adelaide — Instigate Theatre Productions, Adelaide Fringe, February–March 2008, directed by Toni Main

  2. The revival

    Delton, Michigan, USA — February 2016, directed by Renae Feldpausch

In Evidence

The full cast crowd in around a cowering Myles Fletcher on a black stage — an older woman brandishing a meat cleaver at the left edge, the rest in evening dress, every face suspicious.
The full company — Higher Ground, 2008
A woman in a red satin dress lies back across a chaise longue while a man in a green shirt and knitted vest adjusts his bow tie above her, lit in a single warm pool against the dark.
The chaise longue, in one warm pool of light

“A Stab In The Dark brings together a cast of characters representing all aspects of human vice. Played brilliantly by all the players and with some great artistic direction, this one will keep you guessing right till the thrilling conclusion.”

— Luke Balzan, Rip It Up