Tickets: £16, £10 Under 25s

HumDrum return to The Spring this June with Kate Summerscale’s unconventional lockeddoor mystery The Suspicions of Mr Whicher.One of Portsmouth’s leading local theatre companies, HumDrum bring their own style to this true Victorian case.

A seemingly-impossible crime tears through the quiet respectability of a rural household. What begins as a shocking act soon becomes a national obsession, drawing investigators, neighbours, journalists, and the family themselves into a tightening circle of scrutiny.

As those entangled in the aftermath struggle to make sense of what happened, the story follows their search for truth, the burden of guilt—both imagined and real—and the faint hope of redemption that refuses to be extinguished. Memories warp, loyalties shift, and suspicion seeps into every corner, revealing how fragile certainty becomes when fear and secrecy take hold.

The result is not simply a mystery but a haunting exploration of human frailty, moral ambiguity, and the desperate need to find meaning in a puzzle that defies solution.

Running time: 150min, including interval