Day 51: Go Back for Murder, by Agatha Christie

The final installment of Agatha Christie certainly didn't disappoint. This time a group is brought back together after several years to re-enact a long-since closed case at the (apparent) murderer's daughter's request, eager to clear her mother's name for her father's death. The group piece together a reconstruction from their memories of events as they unfolded at the time. Clearly nobody can actually be arrested or in any way officially accused now, and as it turns out the daughter, trying to clear her name as the child of a killer to mollify a skittish fiancé, ends up leaving her boyfriend anyway. In that sense it's probably the least satisfying ending of the lot, and as much as I like the idea of the premise, I doubt anyone would have such clear memories after the 20 years or so that are meant to have passed.

That all said, there's plenty of little twists and it's as easy and fun a read as the rest. It seems unlikely I'll ever get to see most of them performed (apart from the Mousetrap if I can work out timings to grab the tour somewhere along the way) but I feel like it's something I will be keeping an eye out for in the future.

Day 48: Verdict, by Agatha Christie (Day 47 spent having adventures)

Verdict is an interesting one, which deals with a lot of difficult topics, not least being the apparently cold-blooded "mercy killing" of a seriously disabled woman. I can't help but feel like this must have come from either a personal incident or a news report. Unusually for these plays the backstory is a lot less personal and developed than the characters in previous plays have been, instead seeming more coldly factual. In part perhaps that's because the leading man in the play, husband to the victim, is supposed to have limited interpersonal skills which are focussed mainly in a rather naive set of personal morals and ideals. But the other characters feel starkly two-dimensional, in a way that would make sense if they were lifted from a reported story. Alternatively if it is related to something that happened to someone Christie knew, she may have wanted to keep the characters a little bit bland to avoid identifying people.

I found myself uncomfortably relating to a lot of the facets of the situation in the story. I've been through a period of chronic illness, but I'm also all too familiar with the subsequent problem of not understanding why people won't believe the truth. The twists in the story are pretty much entirely dark and depressing, and the very close of the last scene feels almost jarring in bringing just a sniff of hope that not every single person left alive is going to have an unhappy ending. Perhaps that's something that would come across more smoothly in performance, but as it is I almost feel like leaving the whole thing as a tragedy would do more justice to the story than the ending as it stands.

Day 46: Towards Zero, by Agatha Christie

Once again I've been left feeling a little bit ambiguous about "whodunnit", since apparently one person successfully framed himself and several other people, and it's the others who are actually the more plausible guilty parties. While there's only one ending written into the script, I feel like it could benefit from alternative ending options (much like Clue uses) since it really is left wide open for most of the final act.

I'm not convinced there's any one character I'd particularly want to play in this one, all of the women have their intreague and alterior motives and not one of them is an entirely nice person, though Mary could be fun to explore as she appears to be on the outside of most of the action (and is described as such by one of the other characters early on) and yes is the only person the murderer deems necessary to get out of the way (at least temporarily) before committing the act.

There is a certain amount of backstory provided in the entrance descriptions for one or two of the characters which doesn't really come across in the script, which could be seen as a hangover from the literary background of these plays as I've mentioned before, but it occurs that such backstory is more useful to the actor than it is relevant in so many words to the audience. It's not something I've seen done much elsewhere, but is certainly a device I'll be looking out for in future. Much like the detailed stage directions and set notes I've noted in these and other plays, at first glance they seem to narrow the creeative liscence of the director and/or actors, but it does also allow for a more consistent starting point, dictated by the author, whenever and wherever the play is performed.

Day 45: Witness for the Prosecution, by Agatha Christie

In this play we have a marked shift in where the action takes place. Most of Christie's stories so far have followed a group of people, in varying states of being cut off from the world in which one (or more) of them are killed on stage. This time we start with an accusation and arrest, and the action is split between the courtroom and associated legal offices as the case unfolds. Central to the story are a seemingly innocent man and his apparently compulsively lying wife. There are so many shifts and changes, holes and mismatches that it's almost impossible to see where the blame is going to eventually lie. I don't tend to follow cleverly-delivered lies all that well anyway, but I was left still entirely unsure what the truth of the situation really was by the end. It's possible it may have been clearer in performance.

Day 43: The Mousetrap, by Agatha Christie (day 44 again spent travelling)

I first saw this play with my grandmother many years ago, since it's so long-running (I think at the time it may have been celebrating 45 or 50 years, it's now into the 60th anniversary tour) and while I don't remember much about seeing it then, I certainly enjoyed reading the script. It's interesting that the play shares a name with the play-within-a-play from Hamlet... and a brief look at the introductory notes mentions that in fact Christie named her play in honour of that, as the original title of the radio play (from which the stage show grew) was Three Blind Mice, a title already attributed to a different play.

For the sake of those who haven't seen it, I will take to heart the traditional request (not included in the script, but mentioned in the notes and something I do feel like I might remember from having seen it) that the secret not be given away. It seems entirely reasonable that the longest continuously running show in history should keep a bit of mystery about it. There are plenty of shows and films with various prizes attributed to them, but not many can boast Guinness records, and The Mousetrap has - technically - four (though one of those was essentially a new certificate for longest running production presented at the 50th anniversary gala production).

Of itself there's perhaps not much to say, as with her other plays, Christie has provided varied characters with deep backstories, a meticulously detailed setting and plenty of twists in the tale. Once again, a joy to read (and as it turned out, a pleasant way to spent a dismally rainy afternoon).

Day 42: The Hollow, by Agatha Christie (Day 41 was spent travelling and not much else)

Attempting to get back on track in time for the new year, today's play was The Hollow. More little twists in this one than the previous Christie plays, and a lot of obvious nods to genre clichés before turning them aside and going in a different direction - the victim didn't die instantly, the name he cried out in his death throes wasn't the killer, the butler was accused but didn't do it... and so on. I continue to find her style wonderfully easy to read and follow. Once again there was a huge amount of detail put into describing the set, but the entirety of the action remains in that one place and everything listed is eventually required by at least a couple of lines of dialogue during the course of the story.

Once again, Christie has written in complex and interesting backstories for all of the characters, some of them clearly designed to be red herrings to the mystery. On in particular - an apparently "conviniently timed" proposal turns out to be genuinely meant rather than a handy cover story as the other characters suspect. Yet another cliché twisted.

There are a couple of characters who would appeal to me to play, in particular Midge and Gerda, who seem to have far deeper characters than almost anyone else on stage even notices in them. Playing with those layers is always interesting, and while it's reasonably common to see those deeper motivations shared with the audience but not the other characters, here there's a lot of depth revealed very late on which explains earlier actions, so playing the character would require having that extra layer hidden under the surface all the way through, maybe showing in the way certain lines are said or a meaningful glance, there to see if you know what to look for but not so obvious that the reveal is lost.

Day 37: Appointment With Death, by Agatha Christie

The next installment of holiday murder mysteries, this time on holiday in Jerusalem. This one has similarly detailed set requirements, the more I think about that I suspect it's a hangover from the majority of Christie's work being prose rather than script. There is one character with a written dialect accent, which normally annoys me but it's kept to just a minimum required to remind the reader of the accent, so it doesn't slow things down too much. I do sort of feel like it should be left to the actor rather than written in, in general.

Once again I find myself drawn into interesting character backstories and clever twists. This time we're really not given any pathos for the victim whatsoever - she's a thoroughly awful human being all the way through, and the end is both fitting and horrific. There is the insinuation that most of the surviving characters go on to at least have a chance of living happily ever after, which is a relief. It's very easy to quickly start to care about these characters from the outset, one of the things I think makes a great script.

Day 36: And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie

Over the holiday season, my thus-far traditional Saturdays off are going to be sort of rearranged around family time, and since there were at least 2 days last week without a play it seems entirely fair now that I'm back on track to just keep going.

I've brought along a book of eight of Christie's plays to get me through the majority of the season (though I have A Winter's Tale for Christmas eve) and it seems even more fitting that I should be in Devon while reading them, as it turns out this is where she did the majority of her writing (and indeed, it's where this first one is set). And Then There Were None sets ten people lured to and stranded on Indian Island, each accused of having a hand in someone's death, either directly as murderer or through careless action or inaction. The action played out over the course of several days reminds me very much of the film Clue, with plenty of farce in what would otherwise be a terrifying predicament.

As reading material the style is light and quick - I have seen Mousetrap performed, though quite some time ago now, which is what tempted me to look into Christie's broader repetoire in the first place, and it doesn't disappoint. As a short and comedic murder mystery there's not a lot of take-home moral message but there are certain acting challenges which come to mind. The stage layout is very particularly prescribed and stays largely the same throughout the play - which is something I've complained about in the past but in this case it is necessary and gives a much clearer idea of the grand scale and remote location of the house where the play is set without actually needing to show all of it. Very much looking forward to getting through the rest of these plays over the next couple of weeks!