Domestic violence at its very best

Is home theatre a viable alternative to the dinner party, asks Nicholas Roe

Lord Hampstead is slumped in the living-room of a pleasant, four-bedroom house in Burgess Hill, West Sussex nursing a gouty foot and gulping whisky. Rosie the maid is by the French windows snogging a guest. On the stairs, a retired army major is trying to throttle a woman called Nell.

Treading the floorboards: the Company Upfront take their grisly mysteries to Burgess Hill

What's happening? Just the last word in home entertainment. Never mind your 62-channel digital TV and state-of-the-art sound system. For a really good night in, there is nothing to beat the real thing: live performers who arrive with props, costumes and special lighting, to turn your house into a theatre for the night. Noisy fridges and patchy carpets don't matter. Even the most modest of semis are becoming star attractions thanks to a little imagination - and a certain amount of cash.

For Suzy Pierce, it was a quest for "something a bit different" to celebrate her 21st birthday that led her to invite actors into her parents' Burgess Hill home, where 40 guests became the goggle-eyed audience. "I wanted something that could bring my friends from home and university together," she explained.

Parents Ray and Hilary duly forked out around £800 for seven performers attached to the Company Upfront, a Kent-based troupe who rolled up with lighting, costumes, props and assorted weapons, to stage a full-scale, in-house murder mystery - in this case, Murder at the Manor.

Sweeping through six rooms, including three bedrooms, the performance began and ended with 20-minute plays - a curtain-raiser and dramatic denouement. In between, guests competed to solve the crime by quizzing actors who mingled but stayed in character throughout the three-hour evening. The result? "A wonderful experience," says Hilary. "The kids were still talking plots at one o'clock in the morning."

Though aimed mostly at hotels and restaurants, the shows offered by Upfront - and similar companies - are drawing increasing interest from home-owners anxious to capitalise on the dramatic potential of their own living space.

Keith Stitchman, who runs the business from his house in the village of Edenbridge, says: "We do about 20 performances a year in people's homes, and it depends on the size of the home which story we do - but we've actually performed in quite small places. The atmosphere's never a problem because people just get taken over by the play."

Some clients enjoy showing off parts of posh houses normally hidden from dinner guests who rarely stray beyond dining-room or loo. Mostly, though, the demand comes from people desperate for something different to offer friends - as many as 70 or as few as six.

Decadent? Not really. Suzy's 40 guests sat on the floor or perched on sofas round the walls, squeezing into the 25-ft by 12-ft living-room where the main plays were acted out at full actorly volume. Yet with a conservatory to one side, and a large, decorative fireplace centre-stage flanked by alcoves, the turn-of-the-century room specifically added to the "manor house" atmosphere. And why not? Most homes have witnessed enough real dramas to fill several scripts.

Things do go wrong. Mr Stitchman recalls using an attached garage in one house as a changing room. "I was in the main room doing the introduction and started the curtain-music. The lights went down and two actors were supposed to walk in - but they didn't. One of the guests had inadvertently locked the door to the garage and the actors were all out there banging on the wall but we couldn't hear." At another do, a group of 18-year-olds were drunk before the actors arrived, and began vomiting as the evening progressed: "We just took it as it came," says Mr Stitchman.

Mostly, in-house performances leave guests genuinely entranced. Vanessa Walsh, an accountant, and her computer consultant husband Ewan, who live near East Grinstead in East Sussex clubbed together with friends to stage a murder mystery: "Everyone paid £25 a head," says Vanessa. "It was like going to an Agatha Christie play, except you could talk and laugh. And it was a lot more relaxed and a lot more enjoyable. The actors were absolutely fantastic. They stayed on afterwards and partied with us."

Ivette Marriott of Westerham, Kent, insisted that all her guests dress in costume when actors staged Murder at the Pharoah's Tomb in her large Edwardian house - lots of Cleopatras duly fetched up. "They all loved it," she says. "I have got so many thank-you cards saying it was wonderful and unique."