by Julius Green
Anyway we thoroughly enjoyed it and I hope it really does well.
Yours sincerely,
Rosalind Hicks
I’m sorry I forgot to post this last week!33
Clearly relieved, Saunders responded,
Dear Mrs Hicks,
Thank you so much for your letter. As I didn’t hear from you I was wondering whether you were quite appalled at the production, and had written to your mother telling her to cable Bertie Meyer forthwith!
When you saw Gerda she had already been toned down in the first two acts, and since then Hubert has gone even further in making her a little less sub-human.
Jeanne de Casalis is not and never will be Lady Angkatell. But I do feel that the one thing lacking in this play is a personality such as Poirot or Miss Marple, and I am hoping that Jeanne will be a substitute.34
He went on to suggest that the scene she did not like would benefit from a rewrite, and reassured Rosalind that Midge would in any event be re-costumed for the London opening: ‘Apart from the star one does not provide clothes for the women until the West End, in case there are changes of cast.’
There is no copy of Rosalind’s letter to her mother in Baghdad, but she evidently had expressed many the same opinions that she had to Saunders, eliciting the response:
Very pleased to get your letter about the play – if on the whole you wouldn’t have any one changed, it must be more or less all right. Glad you thought Henrietta good – Stephen didn’t – but Beryl was madly nervous and constantly in tears and probably didn’t do herself justice in Cambridge. At rehearsal I thought she and Joan Newell were very good in end scene – and you say so too – and that’s very important. I think Hubert is on the watch to keep Joan Newell from going too far – He is a good producer [i.e. director] – streets ahead of Reginald Tate [director of Murder in the Vicarage].35
But despite the tour’s success Saunders was having difficulty in securing a West End theatre for the production. A few weeks later Cork wrote to Christie:
It has been very difficult indeed to get a suitable West End theatre for it, however, the people who control several of the smaller theatres do not seem to think it is the sort of show that should be put on at an ‘intimate’ house, while we are quite sure on this point after seeing the effect of the vast Wimbledon stage – it was a good show there, but not the superlative attraction that it should be. The result of the negotiations is that Peter Saunders has definitely got a line on the Fortune – against no less than thirty-eight competing shows – and he plans to open during the first week in June. The Fortune would not have been my first choice, as there is very little casual business there, but it is a nice little theatre and can play to £1,600 a week – which would suit us very nicely – and what is by no means unimportant, it will come on after your return.36
In his autobiography, Saunders writes:
It was impossible to get a theatre at the time, and I find that in writing to Agatha Christie I told her that there were thirty-eight plays waiting to come into London. I suspect this was a gross exaggeration. So after eight weeks on tour I called it off and re-cast three parts. The Fortune theatre, which no-one wanted, was going to be available from June until the end of September, which in those days was the worst time of the year . . . Agatha had written from Baghdad hoping that I would not open the play in the summer, but again this remarkable lady accepted the fact that there was nothing else I could do.37
Saunders notes that the manager of the Westminster Theatre liked the play and was keen to provide a home for it, but that the theatre’s owners insisted they would rather close and go dark than take the production. The lease on the Westminster had recently been taken over by Reandco, and the first play hosted by them there had been their own production of Lesley Storm’s hugely successful Black Chiffon, starring Flora Robson. The man who objected so strongly to The Hollow was none other than E.P. Clift, Alec Rea’s business partner. Reandco’s last Christie production having been the less than satisfactory Murder on the Nile, it may simply have been that they had lost faith in her as a playwright. Or perhaps Reandco, who had produced work in partnership with Tennents, had no desire to ally themselves with Saunders.
The production reopened in Nottingham on 14 May 1951 and completed a three-week tour prior to opening at the Fortune on 7 June. The opportunity was taken to recast the actors playing Midge and Sir Henry, and Hubert Gregg also left the company, in order to take on the role of Prince John in Disney’s film of Robin Hood. He remained director and, once again, his peculiar brand of meticulous pedantry appears to have served the work well. Cork had reassured Christie that ‘Hubert Gregg has been caught up by some film commitment, and had to give up the part of Cristow, but he will be available to do his producer’s stuff, and in fact you really have got your own way in having him able to devote himself wholly to that side, without an actor’s little vanities creeping in.’38 He believed that the new actors were an improvement and lamented that the actress previously playing Midge just went ‘down and down. She never reproduced that emotional quality that we admired at the first reading . . .’
Far from fighting off thirty-eight other productions, Saunders had actually been offered the Fortune for The Hollow, sight unseen, the previous year; he even mentions it in his application to the Arts Council. Despite technically being part of the Group (Prince Littler himself was listed as managing director) it was one of the least in-demand of the West End theatres, being used by amateurs for several months of the year.
On the night The Hollow opened in the West End, the thirty-five plays and musicals competing for audiences included Tom Arnold’s production of Ivor Novello’s Gay’s the Word, starring Cicely Courtneidge, at the Saville and Farndale’s production of Worm’s Eye View, which had moved to the Comedy Theatre and was in its sixth year. Celia Johnson and Renee Asherson were appearing in Three Sisters at the Aldwych, Donald Wolfit could be seen in His Excellency by Dorothy and Campbell Christie at the Piccadilly, Terence Rattigan’s Who Is Sylvia? was playing at the Criterion and Peter Ustinov was starring in The Love of Four Colonels at Wyndhams.
On opening night The Stage carried a report about a talk given by Christie on the forthcoming production. There is no record of where this talk was given, or to whom, but Christie appears to show none of her legendary shyness when it comes to discussing her forthcoming play. As ever, it is the issue of Poirot on stage that is her principal concern. Under the heading ‘New Style Detective’, the article announces:
When Agatha Christie’s new play, The Hollow, opens at the Fortune to-night, Thursday, she will introduce a new kind of stage detective. So far as the theatre is concerned, Miss Christie’s celebrated Poirot has been ‘killed’, chiefly because of the difficulty of casting him. ‘Poirot will still appear in my books,’ Miss Christie said in a talk, ‘but I have a new detective for theatre purposes. I found that the difficulty of casting such an individualised character sometimes spoiled his effect in the theatre. Although the artists concerned gave excellent performances, some of those who had known him in my books had different views as to how he should look! The detective in The Hollow is, I think, a more usual sort of person, at least so far as appearance and personality are concerned. As he will be new to audiences, whether they have read my books or not, it should be possible for him to establish himself without undue difficulty.’ Miss Christie’s new play attempts to combine real-life characterisation and atmosphere with its thriller elements. ‘It is more of a murder-drama set in ordinary social surroundings than a Who-done-it?’ she explained. ‘I believe that the more firmly you place your plot in everyday surroundings, and have characters with a life of their own, the more effective your drama will be. It is a limitation to have to rely entirely on your thrills or surprises. I have tried to make my detective as natural as possible, both in himself and in his methods. After all the ‘private investigator’ isn’t much known in real life, apart from divorce matters.’39
Poirot’s replacement, the dilige
nt, methodical and rather colourless Inspector Colquhoun, certainly runs no risk of upstaging the characters who Christie is really interested in.
Despite Gregg’s claims to have won the day as a result of his application of directorial thriller gimmickry, Christie must have been gratified to see the West End reviews recognising a quality of realism in the writing. ‘Full marks to Miss Christie,’ said the Evening Standard, ‘The Hollow is in fact that rarity; a thriller about reasonable and interesting people, intelligently and credibly acted.’40 The Evening News concurred: ‘“Keep the secret locked in your hearts” said Jeanne de Casalis at the curtain-call of The Hollow by Agatha Christie . . . but I think, even knowing “whodunit” I might nerve myself to sit out this play again because of the highly entertaining dialogue and the penetrative character-acting with which it is adorned.’41 J.C. Trewin, writing in the Illustrated London News, commented, like The Times, that the opening scene dragged a bit, but noted that
to the end her listeners stay rapt . . . The main interest of the play, as a piece of writing, is in the mystery; but Mrs Christie writes quick, speakable dialogue and, gleefully, her cast keeps us guessing until the dying minutes of the third act . . . And, for once, Mrs Christie does not ask us to solve the mystery of a detective, to fathom why so strange a fellow should be down from Scotland Yard. Martin Wyldeck’s detective is an Englishman. He is a professional. He has no catchwords, no foibles, no oddities of dress or manner. He merely does his job. It is all very curious and unexpected.42
Ivor Brown, in the Observer, also approved of Christie’s specially created new stage detective: ‘Martin Wyldeck is an admirable Detective Inspector, neither smart nor smart Alec, but just humanly and taciturnly natural.’43 It seems that Christie had finally expunged the curse of Poirot from her stage work.
Other preconceptions about her plays were less easily dispensed with than the inclusion of Poirot, however. The News of the World wrote:
Agatha Christie, sitting well back in a box at the Fortune theatre, listened to the rounds of applause and knew that the old, old formula had worked once more. For her new play, The Hollow, faithfully follows the pattern of her countless other ‘whodunit’ stories which have made the 60-year-old authoress Britain’s most popular thrill provider. Of course, there may be some who will cavil at this; who will demand new angles on the proven formula. But as one who rarely guesses right in the game of ‘find the murderer’ I personally hope that the Christie technique will continue unchanged. There is of course, a country house week-end party. There is, inevitably, a shooting on the stage by a murderer or murderess unseen. And it follows automatically that the man who is shot is loved by various women (three in this case) all of whom may have a motive for murder. Jeanne de Casalis has a perfect ‘Mrs Feather’ part, and supplies the laughs that according to custom must lighten the tension. It’s ideal entertainment for those who can’t sleep without a thriller at the bedside.44
This was, in fact, only Christie’s fifth play to be presented in the West End, and of the previous four only two had been set in a country house, and neither of those had featured the shooting of a philandering man by an unseen murderer.
The Sunday Chronicle introduced an even more cynical note:
It is reasonably safe to prophesy that eventually almost everyone in this enchanted island will see The Hollow, Agatha Christie’s latest whodunit, which opened at the Fortune Theatre on Thursday. Only a small proportion can see it at the Fortune, even if it runs there for years, for this is one of London’s smallest theatres – with 493 seats. But this we are sure is only the launching site for a long and lucrative voyage. The Hollow will be filmed, televised, broadcast and for the next decade or so will head the ‘surefire’ list compiled for repertory companies and amateur societies. Considered purely as a play it would be a negligible contribution to the drama, but as a whodunit (and they have been woefully scarce in recent years) it is a fascinating and intriguing exhibition of sleight-of-hand on the part of the author.45
Although most of the reviews insisted on describing the play as a ‘thriller’ or a ‘whodunit’, Saunders remained true to his promise to Christie and removed the words from the publicist’s vocabulary. Whether the alternative was an improvement is, perhaps, doubtful: ‘This gripping but not gruesome comedy-mystery is the latest play from the most famous of all detective story writers’, proclaimed the leaflet advertising the production, continuing, ‘Jeanne de Casalis, George Thorpe and Ernest Clark co-star in this brilliant play. Glamour is provided by Beryl Baxter, star of the film “Idol of Paris” and Dianne Foster, lovely actress of the Canadian stage.’46
Although Hubert Gregg evidently made a good job of directing The Hollow, and made a good living from his association with Christie over the years, it seems a shame that someone with so little regard for her both as a writer and a person should have been so close to the centre of operations. In his book, Gregg is at great pains to emphasise what he believes to be the critical importance of his own contributions to the script, acknowledged, as he sees it, by Saunders’ reference to him (on a copy of it he signed in 1952) as ‘the architect of victory’.47 ‘One day, I was given the script of The Hollow to read,’ he explains. ‘It was hair-raising . . . I mean I thought it was abysmal. The dialogue was unspeakable . . . the characters were caricatures. The denouement was good. “Jesus,” I said to myself quietly. “I need the job.”’48 Similarly, when offered the role of John Cristow, ‘Any actor who would accept Cristow if he didn’t need the money would be out of his histrionic mind.’ A few months previously Christie had been awarded a Fellowship by the Royal Society of Literature. Her critic’s greatest claim to fame as a writer were the lyrics to ‘Maybe it’s Because I’m a Londoner’.
Gregg makes great play of the fact that Christie does not allow enough time for a kettle to boil or for actors to change into evening dress, and that her set requires two French windows, a door, a fireplace and a ‘breakfast nook’ (all of which were, as it turned out, well within the capabilities of designer Joan Jefferson Farjeon). He claims to have cut the first act ‘to ribbons’, and that he had to persuade Christie to introduce a thunderstorm at the climax of the piece. In these days before lighting designers, when directors tended to light their own plays, we hear much from him of his particular skills in this department (there is a lighting plan inserted in the front of his copy of the script). No wonder it rankled when Christie not only failed to mention him in her autobiography, but heaped particular praise on Irene Hentschel’s lighting for Ten Little Niggers. Perhaps most astonishingly, Gregg compares his dramaturgical role in nurturing The Hollow from page to stage with that of Gerald du Maurier’s legendary (and well paid) contribution to Edgar Wallace’s dramatisation of The Ringer, and argues that he should have received comparable acknowledgement and financial recompense for his work. He includes in his book a page of Christie’s own notes as if to demonstrate the vast superiority of his own insights.
The Christie archive includes no script of any sort for The Hollow, but Gregg’s own copy is amongst the Gregg/Christie memorabilia recently put up for sale. It has to be said that the typescript appears to have been extensively cut and annotated in (blue) ink, but whether this constitutes anything more significant than the usual adjustments made to a new play at rehearsals with the writer present is difficult to say. If the script had been definitively reworked prior to rehearsals, as Gregg suggests, then it would surely have been retyped and issued to the actors on day one. It is also worth questioning whether Gregg’s textual cuts improved the quality of the work. Here are three separate examples of the cuts he made:
DORIS: My dad says I ought to call myself a domestic help.
GUDGEON: That’s about all you are.
[Cut: DORIS: What d’you mean?
Cut: GUDGEON: In my young days when a girl wasn’t bright enough to be a good parlour maid or a proper housemaid, or even an efficient kitchen maid, she had to call herself a ‘household help’ and was paid accordingly. She h
ad no proper status.]
CRISTOW [on his role as a doctor]: I don’t cure them. Just hand out faith, hope and probably a laxative. [Cut: In a bottle flavoured with peppermint for the poor and wrapped in cellophane and costing a guinea for the rich.]
[Cut: HENRIETTA: And of course Gudgeon is the last of the butlers. Any bit of human flotsam who is entrapped in this house as an under-servant has to live up to Gudgeon’s standards or go.]49
Gregg holds the following line up for particular ridicule as an example of Christie’s ‘unspeakable’ dialogue:
HENRIETTA: Hurry up, Henry, it’s nearly dinner time.
HENRY: I’ll be like greased lightning.50
Personally, I can’t see a problem with it; and can well imagine such a response from old Sir Henry. Some of Gregg’s work on scene structure clearly resolves issues of timing, which is, after all, the director’s job. I cannot really see, though, any marked improvements as a result of his editing of Christie’s generally well-crafted dialogue. Gregg was horrified when, a few years later, he was turned down for another job because of his work on what someone had described to his potential employer as ‘those awful Christie plays’. He apparently saw no irony in the fact that his own lack of regard for her writing doubtless had a role to play in propagating the views that condemned Christie to the end of the Arts Council’s pier.