Ruddy Gore: Death by Comic Opera

‘Wonderfully evocative and witty.’ – Jan Chandler

En route to 1928’s gala performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Ruddigore, Phryne Fisher intervenes in a street scuffle and rescues a handsome Chinese and his grandmother. In His Majesty’s Theatre, she witnesses a bizarre death onstage. What can the preposterous plot of Ruddigore, with its ghosts, ancestors and confusion of identities, have to do with the Chinese community of Little Bourke Street – or with the performances of the play?

Investigating, Phryne is drawn into a backstage world of rivalries and legends and enlists the help of the delicious Chinese magician, adept at showing an impassive face while practising ancient customs behind he scenes. What is reality? What is stagecraft? Phryne must solve puzzles within puzzles as murder treads the boards of ‘the Maj”…