TIME is running out to book tickets for the digital production of Whodunnit at the Coliseum?

The show runs from Friday (April 9) to Sunday April 25 and is a joint effort between Oldham Coliseum Theatre and Front Room Productions.

Written by Alice Barber, Olivia Race - also the director - and Claire-Marie Seddon, who has also arranged the original music.

Set in the historic Oldham Coliseum Theatre in 1954, on the opening night of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, audiences will meet members of the theatre’s audience and staff before the show.

When the front of house manager Mr Fitch is found dead moments before curtain-up everyone becomes a suspect.

Audiences embark on a journey around the theatre using a bespoke game board, discovering each suspect’s connection to Fitch in an attempt to decipher who the culprit is.

Part promenade theatre and part digital Cluedo, Whodunnit at the Coliseum? features 1950s inspired musical numbers and video game-esque interactivity, fusing nostalgia with modernity to create a production the likes of which the historic theatre has never seen before.

The production takes place digitally via a bespoke website, offering people the opportunity to return to the theatre for the first time since March 2020 without physically leaving their homes. Action takes place all around the Oldham Coliseum building taking viewers to familiar spaces including the bar and the foyer, plus rarely seen backstage areas.

In theatrical superstition Shakespeare’s Macbeth is said to be cursed – known as The Scottish Curse – forbidding the mention of the play’s title or lines outside of rehearsal or performances, lest something terrible happen. In real life, in 1947, Oldham Coliseum Theatre saw one such incident when actor Harold Norman was accidentally stabbed on stage during a performance of Macbeth. Norman died from his injuries weeks later in Oldham Royal Infirmary.

With its setting in 1954, Whodunnit at the Coliseum? takes place ominously on the opening night of the first production of The Scottish Play since the terrible incident.

This production is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

Designed by Celia Perkins, filmed by Grant Archer, digital experience by James Clare and graphic graphic design by Ria Barnes.