TRUST NO ONE: FIVE KILLER SHOWS ARE COMING TO BLACKPOOL GRAND – AND EVERYONE HAS SOMETHING TO HIDE
Improvised murder, ghostly secrets, high-school killers, Hannibal Lecter and one spectacularly shoddy detective create a dangerously entertaining season at The Grand
Some murders will be invented by the audience. Some will be concealed behind a seemingly civilised family dinner. One will arrive with a killer soundtrack, another will enter the darkest corners of the human mind – and one investigation may collapse into complete chaos before the detective gets anywhere near the truth.
Between October 2026 and February 2027, Blackpool Grand Theatre becomes the scene of five very different crimes as comedy, music, mystery and psychological terror collide in a dangerously entertaining season of live theatre.
The investigation begins on Friday 9 October with Edinburgh Fringe favourites Degrees of Error and their ingenious improvised comedy Murder, She Didn’t Write.
There is no script, no predetermined victim and no ending waiting backstage. Instead, the audience becomes the author, providing the people, places and suspicious circumstances from which the company must create a completely original Agatha Christie-inspired murder mystery on the spot.
Could Ms Gold be poisoned at a synchronised-swimming gala? Might Dr Blue explode from a cannon during a hot-air-balloon race? Has Professor Violet met a grisly end at a Love Island recoupling? The audience decides – then attempts to identify the murderer before the final revelation.
Every clue, character, comic disaster and unexpected twist is created live. Once that particular mystery has been solved, it will never be performed again, making this one-night-only Blackpool visit genuinely unique.
From Tuesday 20 to Saturday 24 October, the producers of Murder at Midnight and Murder in the Dark return with Torben Betts’ wickedly entertaining new thriller The Other Side of Murder.
Celebrated television medium Darius Divine, host of hit light-entertainment show The Other Side, is expecting an awkward but manageable family dinner. What he gets is his pregnant lover, a Gilbert and Sullivan-obsessed mother-in-law, ghostly visitations and a series of increasingly explosive revelations.
As dinner burns and tensions rise, performance and reality begin to blur. Secrets emerge, jealousies ignite and the evening races towards a final twist designed to leave audiences laughing one moment and gasping the next.
Directed by Philip Franks, the production brings together an outstanding cast including Rufus Hound, Susie Blake, Carla Mendonça, Aisha Jawando, Beth Lilly and Andy McLeod. Funny, unsettling and full of theatrical surprises, it asks one dangerous question: what is really waiting on the other side?
The body count rises during Halloween week as the WhatsOnStage Award-winning Heathers The Musical takes over The Grand from Tuesday 27 to Saturday 31 October.
Welcome to Westerberg High, where popularity is a matter of life and death. Veronica Sawyer is an intelligent outsider desperate for a better day, but everything changes when she is taken under the perfectly manicured wings of the beautiful and impossibly cruel Heathers.
Her new social status appears to offer everything she wanted – until the mysterious and dangerously charismatic JD arrives. He teaches Veronica that it might kill to be a nobody, but it is murder being a somebody.
Based on the cult film starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, Heathers The Musical has become a phenomenon in its own right following smash-hit runs in London and New York. Wickedly funny, deliciously dark and packed with huge musical numbers, its examination of popularity, bullying, identity and teenage isolation has inspired an intensely loyal new generation of fans.
One of musical theatre’s most dangerous high schools arriving in Blackpool over Halloween? Consider that a warning – and an invitation.
The new year begins with an encounter audiences will not forget when The Silence of the Lambs arrives from Monday 11 to Saturday 16 January 2027.
For the first time, Thomas Harris’ landmark psychological thriller has been unleashed live on stage. This world stage premiere brings FBI trainee Clarice Starling terrifyingly close to the brilliant psychiatrist and infamous murderer Dr Hannibal Lecter.
Another young woman is missing, and time is running out. Clarice must persuade Lecter to help her enter the mind of serial killer Buffalo Bill – but Lecter has questions and intentions of his own. To stop one murderer, she may have to allow another inside her head.
Written by award-winning playwright Gina Gionfriddo and directed by Nikolai Foster, the production stars John Partridge as Hannibal Lecter, Mollie Gallagher as Clarice Starling, Oliver Farnworth as Agent Jack Crawford and Sam Jackson as Buffalo Bill.
The characters that have haunted readers and cinema audiences for decades will now be only feet away, with no screen creating a safe distance between them and the audience. The clock is ticking – and Dr Lecter will see you now.
After all that murder, Blackpool might be ready for a competent detective. Unfortunately, from Thursday 25 to Saturday 27 February, it is getting Detective Stuart Pidcock.
Direct from the West End, A Shoddy Detective and The Art of Deception is a laugh-out-loud comedy whodunnit featuring four actors, a dozen characters and a spectacular quantity of chaos.
When a priceless painting vanishes during an auction at a country manor, Pidcock and his unlikely ally must interrogate an eccentric collection of suspects, outwit a cunning thief and solve the crime of the century.
Following sell-out runs in the West End, at the Edinburgh Fringe and across the UK, Shoddy Theatre returns bigger, funnier and even more ridiculous. The clues are questionable, the detective may be worse and the entire investigation threatens to disappear without a trace.
Andrew Howard, Head of Audiences, Marketing and Sales at Blackpool Grand Theatre, said: “A great mystery makes an audience lean forward. You start watching every movement, questioning every character and convincing yourself that you have spotted the clue everyone else has missed. Live theatre intensifies that feeling because the suspects are right there in front of you and there is no pause button when the tension becomes too much.
“What makes this season particularly brilliant is the sheer variety. In Murder, She Didn’t Write, the audience creates a crime that has never existed before. The Other Side of Murder mixes family secrets, the supernatural and an exceptional cast; Heathers turns teenage darkness into a cult musical phenomenon; and The Silence of the Lambs brings some of fiction’s most chilling characters terrifyingly close.
“Then, just when we think we have mastered the art of detection, A Shoddy Detective arrives to make a complete mess of it. Whether you want to laugh, gasp, sing along or spend the interval defending your prime suspect, these are five wonderfully different reasons to experience a mystery live.”
From a murder invented before your eyes to one of the most famous psychological thrillers ever written, nothing is quite what it seems at Blackpool Grand Theatre.
Murder, She Didn’t Write is at Blackpool Grand Theatre on Friday 9 October 2026 at 7.30pm.
The Other Side of Murder runs from Tuesday 20 to Saturday 24 October 2026.
Heathers The Musical runs from Tuesday 27 to Saturday 31 October 2026.
The Silence of the Lambs runs from Monday 11 to Saturday 16 January 2027.
A Shoddy Detective and The Art of Deception runs from Thursday 25 to Saturday 27 February 2027.
Tickets are available from blackpoolgrand.co.uk, or by calling the Blackpool Grand Theatre Box Office on 01253 290190.
