Taking on the iconic role of the titular crime-solver in Inspector Morse: House of Ghosts, Tom Chambers admits to being daunted at the prospect of following in the footsteps of John Thaw from the much-loved TV series. “But it’s a thrilling challenge,” he smiles, “and it’s a delicious treat for anyone who is a fan of Morse, like I was and indeed have been throughout the decades”
For most theatregoers House of Ghosts will be a brand-new story full of surprising twists and turns. It was written in 2010 by Alma Cullen, who – along with Anthony Minghella and Danny Boyle – was one of the original writers on the Inspector Morse TV show when it premiered in 1987. Cullen’s play enjoyed a small tour and a Radio 4 broadcast, but the UK tour marks the first major production of the first-ever Morse story on stage.
Reunited with director Anthony Banks after Dial M for Murder, Chambers says: “Morse is such a fantastic brand and we’re both really excited about the fact that the audience is going to see something that the vast majority of them won’t have seen before. And given that Alma was one of the original writers, he’s very much the Inspector Morse that we know and love.”
The ITV show has been hailed by Radio Times as the greatest British crime series of all time and it inspired the equally beloved spin-offs Lewis and Endeavour. In House of Ghosts a chilling mystery unfolds when a young actress suddenly dies on stage during a performance and Detective Chief Inspector Morse and his sidekick DS Lewis are called in to investigate, as what begins as a suspicious death inquiry takes a darker turn when they uncover a connection to sinister events in Morse’s own past at Oxford 25 years earlier.
As for why he’s both thrilled and daunted about heading the cast for the tour, Tom says: “The thrill for me is in the dialogue and the writing, the camaraderie between Morse and Lewis and their relationship – where you have that classic thing of him putting Lewis down but with a sense of irony or jest and sometimes despair.
“So it’s great fun but daunting too, because you know that an audience is going to want to see something in the style of what they’ve seen before. They don’t want to see something that’s completely, shockingly unexpected, although there’s a different kind of energy to the setting because we’re back in 1987 where there are no mobile phones and it’s all analogue.”
Born in Derbyshire, the actor attended the National Youth Music Theatre, studied at the Guildford School of Acting and came to fame as Sam Strachan on Holby City. His theatre credits include the musicals Top Hat and Crazy for You, as well as the thrillers Murder in the Dark and the aforementioned Dial M for Murder.
Asked why he feels murder mysteries are so popular, especially on stage, Tom muses: “We are curious creatures, aren’t we? We like a puzzle, we like a challenge and the stimulation that goes with it. And in the theatre, of course, everyone is in the same space, in the dark, watching the mystery unfold on stage.”
Now 48, Tom adds with a smile: “I’m not necessarily someone who’s really modern and really cool, and I think Morse is like that too. He’s not necessarily chivalrous, because he can be quite hard at times; he can harsh, very black and white and very honest. He says it how it is, but he does have a sort of gentlemanly manner about him. I like playing that and exploring it.”
Tachia Newall plays Detective Sergeant Lewis and says of the character: “He’s pretty down-to-earth and hard-working. He loves his family and he’s usually thinking about getting home to his wife and kids, but he also wants to get to the bottom of the mystery.”
Is Tachia anything like that? He laughs: “I’m probably quite different because I wouldn’t say that I’m relatively chill. I’m down-to-earth, but I’m a little bit nutty. People will tell you that I’m very excitable.”
The banter between the characters is fun to play. “Lewis is really loyal to Morse and Morse in turn respects his views, even if he gets exasperated by him at times. Morse is from quite an educated background, while Lewis’s accent leads people to believe he’s not that well-educated by comparison.”
Born in Manchester, Tachia grew up watching Inspector Morse on TV but is avoiding rewatching episodes now. “With most acting jobs that I do, if there’s been a previous iteration then I tend to stay clear of it until the job’s finished, just because I don’t want to try and emulate anything that’s been done before.”
Best known as Bolton Smilie from Waterloo Road, Newall is pleased to be reunited with Tom. Their paths crossed when Chambers did a stint on the show in 2009. “I hadn’t seen him since, so it’s good to be back in the room with him. He’s a cracking lad and he’s not changed at all. He’s still got that playful bounce about him.”
Tachia’s theatre credits include Macbeth, so is House of Ghosts a doddle compared to doing Shakespeare? He laughs. “I wouldn’t say it’s a doddle! This is a complex show, with complex timelines. It’s maybe easier emotionally for me, but it’s still challenging. And I just love being on the stage. With theatre, it changes every night. Just having a live audience in front of you, it brings you to life because anything can go wrong and you’ve got to be on your toes. You’ve got to be able to bring it back around.“
Murder mysteries are popular, he feels, because: “They’re such an escape from everyday life and you get to unpick things. You get to go on this journey with the protagonists, and you get to go ‘So they did it? Amazing!’.”
As for whether he’s make a good DS in real life, Tachia reckons: “Probably not. I think frustration might get the better of me. If I hit a brick wall, I might find it difficult to jump outside the box and view things from a different angle.”
Having helmed Dial M for Murder as well as The Girl on the Train, Gaslight and Strangers on a Train, director Anthony Banks is well-versed in stage thrillers. Summing up the appeal of Morse and Lewis in House of Ghosts, he says: “They are ordinary people who, by chance or by accident, have found themselves in these jobs as policemen working for Thames Valley police. They’re told to follow the rules, but people love them because they are messy, accident–prone individuals who are just doing a job. They’re not superheroes.
“There are various little asides where they kind of go ‘You know, we could be doing something else’ but I think that’s why people like them so much – because they recognise their faults and they are modest, and they don’t seek approval in the way that some heroes in fiction do.”
When Anthony read Cullen’s play his first thought was that, having worked with Tom on Dial M for Murder, he’d be the perfect actor to play Morse. “John Thaw is from Manchester and Tom is from the North, so there was that connection, plus he’s around the same age that John was when he started the TV series. Tom has a presence on stage that the audience warms to.”
Then there’s Tachia, about whom the director says: “I met him and immediately thought ‘I’ve found my Lewis’. He’s Mancunian, so he brings a very fresh sound to the character in a slightly working-class and very on-the-nose, straight-down-the-lens kind of way.”
Cullen’s play is interesting, he continues, because: “It’s a feminist piece of writing. Wherever possible she brings into focus what professional life was like for women in Oxford in the 1980s. Very few women held the position of head of department or professor or chair even. These were very changing times and Margaret Thatcher was running the country, but there was a massive amount of work to be done in terms of equality between the sexes. Unfortunately I think there’s still so much work left to be done on that front.”
As to why he feels it’s timely to stage the play now, Banks recalls gifting his father a book about the making of the TV series back in the 80s, in which the author of the Morse books Colin Dexter talked how the world had gone sour, people were going from one crisis to another and the Inspector was just trying to make things a little better.
That memory prompted his decision to revive a play that is set in 1987 and was first performed 15 years ago. “Now here we are, the world has gone a little sour again, we do seem to be moving from one crisis to another, and here’s this guy who wants to make things better. That struck me as a story that audiences would enjoy today.”