Apart from my mother, the only other woman with whom I’ve had a lifelong relationship is Dame Agatha Christie. Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Tommy & Tuppence, I’ve read them all. I’ve seen the movies and TV shows and been to see The Mousetrap twice, so I was very excited to head to the Churchill Theatre Bromley when the touring version of A Murder is Announced dropped in.
Friday morning at Little Paddocks, Chipping Gleghorn meant one thing to Dora Bunner (Sarah Thomas) and that was the arrival of the local paper which she would pour over learning everything that was important in the village. This particular Friday was no different except that in the small ads there was a very strange announcement “A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddocks, at 6:30 p.m. Friends accept this, the only intimation.” Letitia Blacklock (Janet Dibley), the owner of the house treats the announcement as a joke initially. She thinks it is the work of her nephew Patrick Simmons (Will Huntington) or her niece Julia (Lucy Evans) but they deny all knowledge suggesting it might be Phillipa Haymes (Alicia Ambrose-Bayly) who also lives at Little Paddocks. Whoever is responsible, Letitia knows what will happen later. Her neighbour Mrs Swettenham (Cara Chase) and her son Edmund (Dean Smith) will pop in, ostensibly for a chat but in reality to see what happens at 6:30. Accordingly, Letitia instructs everyone to be present and asks her cook/housekeeper Mitzi (Lydia Piechowiak) to prepare some party food for the visitors. At the appointed hour, everyone is assembled. Will anything occur and if it does then will the collective brains of Inspector Craddock (Tom Butcher) and local amateur sleuth Miss Marple (Louise Jameson) be able to assemble the clues and solve the puzzle?
Having read A Murder is Announced many times I came to the show knowing not only who the guilty party – or parties – was/were but also all of the other characters in the story. Luckily, Helen, my companion for the evening had not read the book and so everything was a surprise to her. And, I have to say, as a murder mystery play A Murder is Announced works extremely well. Helen and I spent the whole of the interval discussing likely suspects – with me desperately biting my tongue so as not to give away any spoilers – and the final revelations definitely took Helen – and going by some of the gasps around me, most of the audience – by surprise.
Leslie Darbon’s stage adaptation works very well though I was surprised how many of the original ‘cast’ from the book were excised from the play. While I can understand the logic of keeping the cast fairly small, I did feel a couple more suspects would have really added to the mix. However, Michael Lunney – who directs and has designed the show – has brought together a fine cast and put them in an instantly recognisable Agatha Christie set and costumes. Michael has also brought out a lot of the humour in the story, which works well to keep the story from getting too heavy with the stench of death and deceit. One other point about the directing. When the first event occurred, I was watching the guilty and not a foot was put wrong in his/her/their movements which I have to say was an excellent directorial touch.
Unfortunately for me, there are really only two actresses that can bring Jane Marple to life – Dame Margaret Rutherford and Joan Hickson – but Louise Jameson is a very believable Miss Marple, though, for me, she felt and looked a little too young and attractive to be the wise old spinster. Janet Dibley was absolutely perfect as Letitia Blacklock. A wonderful middle-aged English Lady (with a capital L) imbued with the poise and calmness that was the backbone of the British Empire at one point. A complete contrast to the wonderfully scatty and forgetful Dora Bunner as played by Sarah Thomas with gusto – some excellent looks and asides during the birthday party. The rest of the cast were all pretty much as you would picture an Agatha Christie cast of characters. Everyone is open but everyone has something to hide the actors bring both those sides to every movement of their respective person.
Summing up, A Murder is Announced is a really great representation of quite a complicated Agatha Christie book. Even with the pared down characters, there are enough red herrings and real clues to keep everyone from a novice to a full-on aficionado of the lady’s work.
Dawid Minnar Janine Ulfane – Photograher credit Alixandra Fazzina. “Survival of the fittest” is a phrase that originated from Darwinian evolutionary theory as a way of describing the mechanism of natural selection. Which means that even in the most inhospitable of placers, life will find a way – even if at times, you may look and think what’s the point? For example, in South Africa, the aloe plant is considered one of the country’s most powerful, beautiful and celebratory symbols. It survives out in the wild when everything else is dried. At the end of everything, the aloe is still there. And it is this survival that is at the heart of Athol Fugard’s A Lesson From Aloes which has returned to the UK and is currently in residence at the Finborough Theatre. Set in South Africa in 1963, where apartheid is at its height and the citizens are living in a paranoid police state. The play revolves around a middle-aged left-leaning couple – Afrikaner Piet Bezuidenhout (Dawid Minnaar) and hi
Since 1912, the Blackburn Musical Theatre Company has been entertaining the theatre going folks of this Lancashire town with their annual musical production. In that time, they have covered the vast array of musical theatre from their first production - Sunday - through to their latest - Hello Dolly - which I caught at the Blackburn Empire Theatre. Dolly Gallagher Levi (Sue Chadwick) is a woman that likes to meddle, or as she puts it, arrange things. Whatever you need doing, Dolly is the person for the job. And right now, she is the talk of turn of the century New York, having brought together Mr Horace Vandergelder (Kris Wlodarczyk), the well-known half-a-millionaire and Mrs Irene Molloy (Laura Mitchell) a widowed millener. Their engagement and subsequent marriage seems pretty much sewn up though neither is marrying for love. Horace, as he tells his Chief Clerk, Cornelius Hackl (Ryan Coe), and Assistant, Barnaby Tucker (Fletcher Illingworth), is looking for someone to r
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