Rose is especially good in his scenes with Scott Danielson’s Bunter: their interesting and complicated relationship making for several memorable moments both comical and poignant. Rose plays him with a warmth and affection that renders him instantly likable even if we are never quite sure exactly why he needs to play this dangerous game. William Anthony Sebastian Rose II takes on the role of Lord Peter and is marvelous as the sleuth, who is at base something of a caricature of an amateur detective: a young man with nothing but leisure time and tons of money whose idea of a good time is solving crimes. This guy should be drummed out of the police department for gross incompetence, though he does manage to find one witness who sort of corroborates his thought process, a doctor at a local teaching hospital named Freke (pronounced “Frake” and played by Tony Bozutto).

(Sugg’s unprovoked, tunnel-visioned focus on Thipps is very difficult to comprehend.) Sugg, whose antipathy for Lord Peter is obvious, also has decided (again with no evidence) that the man in the bathtub is, in fact, the missing Jewish financier. Harris) has already made up his mind, contrary to evidence and logic, that he both killed the man and situated him in the bath, perhaps with the help of a housekeeper played by Michaela Voit. Unfortunately for Thipps, a brutish detective named Sugg (Joshua K. Thipps (John Drea), naked save for a pince-nez, at pretty much the same time as another man nearby vanishes without a trace, with Drea’s Parker leading the investigation. The plot involves the appearance of a body in the bathtub of Lord Peter’s neighbor Mr. If the mystery, which is well performed by a fine cast and lovingly directed by Jess Hutchinson, ultimately is too easily predictable, the fault probably lies with Sayers, who was working in this genre for the first time. With the help of his good friends, valet Bunter and police inspector Charles Parker, Wimsey (known as Lord Peter) inserts himself into the investigations of complex and confounding crimes in a popular series of eleven novels and several short stories.Īs adapted by company member Frances Limoncelli, Lifeline Theatre’s production of Whose Body? does a fine job presenting the character of the Oxford-educated Lord Peter and the hyper-loyal Bunter (among other characters), and the novel’s central mystery (which is not the question asked in the title). Sayers’ 1923 novel Whose Body?, the author introduced the character of Lord Peter Wimsey, a highly intelligent aristocrat suffering from what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome upon his return from a stint in WWI that included briefly being buried alive, who decides to devote his time and attention to solving mysteries.

Whose body sayers