Durham Fringe Festival 2026

A Queer Little Murder

Pineapple Rummy Productions

Genre: LGBTQ+ Theatre, Theatre

Venue: Fellows' Garden, Durham Castle

Festival: Durham Fringe Festival

Low Down

Review

A bloodcurdling scream from offstage starts the show and instantly grabs your attention. It’s a bold entrance, designed to hook you before you’ve even settled into your seat. Savannah Hankinson doesn’t waste time she tells you that you’re not merely an observer in her story but an active participant in it. Then comes the invitation: to join her on the journey to Rosebush, Ireland, described (with audacious understatement) as the queerest Ireland there ever was. Even those who might instinctively reach for the exits found themselves excited to stay.

What becomes clear early on is that she has put real work into her craft. When I saw the performance, the script was still in hand, yet it was barely used; this was rarely a technical limitation. Instead, it suggested she has committed to the material so thoroughly that the words flow naturally from her, despite the occasional glance at the page. The storytelling is assured and the pacing meticulous.

The murder mystery genre has been mined to exhaustion, adapted, parodied, deconstructed, and reconstructed so many times that anything fresh feels nearly impossible. Yet Hankinson has found the formula that makes it work: the right balance of enthusiasm and absurdity, the correct measure of action and intrigue, woven together in a way that places you inside the story rather than watching it from behind a metaphorical glass wall.

The show also carries more structural sophistication than it first lets on. She has crafted an arc with an ending that feels earned, while keeping the underlying mystery intact enough to stand up to multiple viewings. She’s built enough flexibility into the telling that the adventure will differ each time; the core structure holds, but the texture, the audience interaction, and the comedic beats that land depending on who’s in the room all shift. It’s the mark of a performer who trusts her material.

That trust extends to the staging, or rather the lack of it. She performs without costumes, elaborate set design, or the usual theatrical apparatus you might expect from a murder mystery, relying instead on theatre of the mind. She plays every character, modulating her voice and physicality to create distinct personas, while never letting the audience forget that this is imagination in action. She builds the set with words and gesture, asking you to populate the space yourself. It sounds like it should be a limitation; instead, it’s a liberation. Without scenery or actors in wigs playing broad caricatures, your attention stays exactly where she wants it: on the story, the mystery, and the sheer range of character work she’s carrying alone onstage.

That invitation to participate pays off properly here. Many shows attempt interactivity and get it wrong, leaving performers seeming to expect enthusiasm that hasn’t been earned or making the audience feel used for effect. Hankinson avoids this entirely, drawing people in gradually until they feel necessary to the story rather than press-ganged into it. The audience becomes the detective, actively working out what they’re witnessing rather than passively receiving it, and the whole dynamic of the show shifts because of it.

There’s something valuable about a show this polished that foregrounds a queer community with such unselfconscious joy. She isn’t performing queerness for straight audiences or straightness for queer ones. She’s simply building a vibrant, messy, funny world full of queer characters and trusting that world to be enough. It is.

If you’re planning your route through this year’s Fringe and you’re tired of the same reliable dramas or the consciously clever comedy, this is the sort of invention you’ve been looking for: a show that respects your intelligence, values your participation, and delivers real entertainment alongside proper craft.

Published August 1, 2026 by Simon Wilson