by Julius Green
As well as The Unexpected Guest’s restoration of her reputation as a playwright, the last years of the decade had brought with them the end of several significant chapters in Agatha’s life. In 1958, following the death of Nancy Neele, she and Archie had exchanged some conciliatory correspondence; perhaps at last this had allowed her to achieve some closure on the distressing incidents of over thirty years before. In the same year, James Watts, Madge’s widower, finally sold the cherished family home Abney Hall, the inspiration for many a Christie setting, most notably Chimneys. And in December 1959, just as Agatha was completing the script for Go Back for Murder, her close friend Nan Kon, James’s sister, died.
There were changes, too, in Max’s life, as he handed over the directorship of the Nimrud excavations in Iraq to a colleague. The British School of Archaeology was to continue its work at Nimrud after 1958’s coup, which had overthrown the monarchy and established a republic in Iraq, but in early 1960 Agatha and Max chose to travel instead to India and Pakistan.
In January, Cork wrote to Agatha in Bombay, ‘Peter seems to be very happy about the new play, plans for which have gone ahead along the lines discussed with you before you left, except that the actor who was to play the lawyer has got caught up with some film commitment and has had to be replaced with Robert Urquhart, who Peter seems to think will give quite as good a performance.’40 Tantalisingly, I can find no clues as to who was originally to have played the role, but thirty-seven-year-old Scottish actor Urquhart, a respected stage and film performer, should have been a safe pair of hands. Hubert Gregg, now it seems automatically entrusted by Saunders with the direction of Christie plays, praises Urquhart’s contribution to the production in his book, although I suspect he may have been Gregg’s own suggestion as a replacement, having played the lead in his thriller Speaking of Murder (‘the best thriller in town’).
When Go Back for Murder started its short pre-West End tour at the King’s Theatre Edinburgh on 22 February, The Stage’s regional critic seemed to appreciate it. Under the headline ‘Ingenious new thriller by Agatha Christie’ the review went on to call it ‘an ingenious whodunit, making use of an unusual technique, calling for intricate staging and lighting. The characters, as one expects from Agatha Christie, are well differentiated, and we are kept guessing . . . we see the tragedy reconstructed, in memory, with Carla’s lawyer as onlooker, ready to spot the vital clue.’41
On 23 March, when the play opened in London, the West End was offering its usual lively mix of thrillers, comedies, new plays, musicals and revues. At Drury Lane My Fair Lady had been recast and had finally seen off Salad Days and The Boy Friend, but was facing competition from West Side Story – ‘a musical with full New York Cast’ – and the transfer of the Theatre Royal Stratford East’s Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be. Margaret Lockwood was appearing for Peter Saunders in the comedy And Suddenly It’s Spring at the Duke of York’s, and the Royal Court was presenting the transfer from Hampstead Theatre Club of the Harold Pinter double-bill The Dumb Waiter and The Room. Go Back for Murder had itself displaced Michael Gilbert’s ingenious thriller A Clean Kill, directed by Alistair Sim and advertised as the ‘Best Crime Play Since Dial M for Murder’, which had taken up temporary residence at the Duchess (between Christies) en route to its final home at the Westminster Theatre.
By 1960 the problem of regular outbreaks of booing at West End first nights had ended as unaccountably as it had started; which, in the case of Go Back for Murder, was probably fortunate. Once again, Christie had comprehensively subverted expectations, but on this occasion Saunders’ production itself seems to have fallen uncharacteristically short of the mark. Kenneth Tynan, who had previously expressed some appreciation, albeit ironically, of Christie’s idiosyncratic work for the stage, was taking a sabbatical from the Observer to work at the New Yorker. His replacement’s brief review said, ‘Go Back for Murder is another example of unexpected collapse, due to inept handling, of a very moderate idea . . . The whole matter is gone through at a snail’s pace and in the teeth of every possible obstacle put in the way of the actors by Michael Weight’s décor.’42 In its ‘theatre round-up’, the Observer commented, ‘Careless work; Agatha can do much better when she tries.’
The Guardian felt that
This is low octane Agatha Christie, mousetrap cheese which only the very hungry will find palatable. It is roughly produced and contains some of the cheapest acting to have been seen on the London stage for many a day. As it may well run for seven years, it would honour the theatre if the producer [i.e. director] and players, with the honourable exception of Margot Boyd in a small part as a huffy governess, would try to establish a workable tempo and passably naturalistic style . . . it might be worse; is not devoid of ingenuity; but is, all the same, a sorry job for the author of Witness for the Prosecution.43
As had been the case with Verdict, The Stage’s London critic was sterner than his regional counterpart. Under the headline ‘Mrs Christie! It’s not as easy as it seems’, the review ran:
Agatha Christie has hardly accomplished a neat, convincing piece of stagecraft in Go Back For Murder, which opened at the Duchess last week. In fact, it is an adaptation of one of her novels, and bears all the signs of a clumsy, inexpert, attempt to bring that totally different medium to life in a theatre. On paper the characters were conventional puppets given a superficial appearance of reality and manipulation with some plausibility purely in the service of puzzlement and plot. But it is not so simple as was evidently thought to write them down in a play-script and expect a group of living actors and actresses to make them compelling to an audience.44
Under the ominous headline ‘Miss Christie varies the routine’, The Times remarked:
Audiences show no obvious signs of growing tired of watching suspects in a case of murder rounded up and put through the hoop, one by one or in selected groups, by a dogged policeman. But Miss Agatha Christie evidently thinks it time they had a change. She tries to vary the routine without altering its fundamental pattern. Go Back for Murder at the Duchess puts the murder some sixteen years back in time and dispenses with the policeman . . . it must be said, however, that Miss Christie has often got more excitement from the routine police investigation than she manages to get from this variation on the routine. She requires in this instance a great many brief scenes which only with difficulty sustain the story’s momentum; her dialogue is so strictly utilitarian that it hardly pretends to have the colour of life . . . Miss Ann Firbank is a vigorous heroine . . . the acting as a whole is as utilitarian as the dialogue.45
Of course, the very idea that ‘Miss Christie’ was daring to alter the ‘routine’ in any way and was unleashing another of her theatrical experiments on her unsuspecting public was enough to send the box office into rapid decline, and the production closed after an inglorious thirty-seven performances. History seems to have overlooked the fact that Go Back for Murder was actually a much bigger disaster than Verdict. It played one more performance (thirty-seven to Verdict’s thirty-six) but the multiple sets, in themselves costing over £2,000, had contributed to it being the most expensive Christie production staged to date, at £5,821. Although Peter Saunders waived some legitimate recharges from his own companies for props and set items, running accounts show substantial weekly losses in addition to the loss of the entire up-front expenditure.46
There was, of course, some additional income to help offset these losses; the pre-London tour had only been four weeks long but the usual licensed tour took place immediately after the West End run and, despite the staging difficulties, there was a level of repertory uptake. When the books closed and Saunders wrote to investors with final accounts, it was to say, ‘I am sorry your investment shows a loss, but I hope you will feel that, for a six set show to run for four and a half weeks in London and to lose just under £3,000 is quite a feat!’47 Verdict, it will be remembered, had lost only £20 for the same length of run; but its costs had been lower and its repertory uptake higher.
The London premiere of Go Back for Murder had coincided with the press announcement that Christie herself had secured a million-pound deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for the screen rights to her work.48 Hubert Gregg and Peter Saunders held the news responsible for a critical backlash; they both quote the Daily Mail’s new critic, Robert Muller, who remarked, ‘I don’t care how rich Miss Christie is. This stinks.’49 Saunders and Gregg, though, must themselves take at least some of the responsibility for the production’s failure. Saunders, happily, had married actress Ann Stewart the previous year, and in the autumn, as Christie finished her script, was focused on furnishing their impressive new home on exclusive Bishop’s Avenue in Hampstead. Gregg, flushed with the success of both The Hollow and The Unexpected Guest, was confident in his belief that Christie and he seemed to be becoming a ‘theatrical sure bet’ – although not, it should be noted, as sure a bet as Christie and Wallace Douglas.
What neither Saunders nor Gregg appear to have appreciated is the complexity of the piece that Christie had presented them with. Michael Weight, as ever, came up with ingenious design solutions, not only for the first act’s five different locations, but also for Act Two, with its stage split between the garden room and terrace. The fact was, however, that the theatre was far too small successfully to accommodate the concept of the production; according to Gregg, ‘The wee Duchess Theatre was surprised out of its scene dock’.
With the exception of the honourable mentions for Margot Boyd and Ann Firbank, the performers mostly came in for as much criticism as the cramped design, and there seems to have been no attempt at all to cast the piece with star actors, even pretend ones. When the Guardian’s critic accused the performers of ‘cheap’ acting he wasn’t far wrong. The payroll is notably lacking in star salaries,50 although a number of the ten-strong cast enjoyed modest television and film profiles; in Lisa Daniely’s case in the title role of the 1950s Lilli Marlene films. Cast as Amyas Crale’s mistress Elsa, Daniely was represented by Herbert de Leon – who again, wisely, did not invest. Whereas The Unexpected Guest, despite its lack of major stars, at least appears to have benefited from a cast who were committed to doing justice to the play, the same, sadly, does not appear to have been the case with Go Back for Murder.
Arguably, the actors may simply have been the victims of the fact that Hubert Gregg himself was clearly well out of his comfort zone. He refers to Go Back for Murder as a ‘problem piece’ and appears to have been genuinely nonplussed by the whole thing. Even the lighting seems to have been beyond his capabilities on this occasion. The Stage’s Edinburgh critic had noted that the play called for ‘intricate’ lighting, and this was eventually provided when Saunders drafted in Michael Northen to undertake a redesign. So successful was the outcome that Northen, a leading pioneer in the field and the first person to be credited as a lighting designer in the UK, went on to light Saunders’ productions on a regular basis, including a complete relight of The Mousetrap the following year. Gregg, who prided himself on his lighting abilities, does not mention Northen’s involvement in his book, but in his own book Northen says that when he was invited to watch the production, ‘I agreed, as tactfully as I could, that the lighting could certainly be improved.’51
Unusually for Gregg, he lays claim to the authorship of only three lines in the play, in this case some innocuous banter about the lack of heating in Fogg’s office, and his overall verdict on the script is that ‘It wasn’t bad. It was different, very different, but it wasn’t bad. I suppose it might have been better as a novel.’52 He takes Christie to task for having adapted a book rather than coming up with a new idea, and goes on to state, with typical arrogance, that he didn’t bother to read Five Little Pigs. ‘I had no intention of reading the book . . . I hadn’t with The Hollow. With Christie I wore theatrical blinkers, it was the only way.’ Perhaps in this case Gregg should have done so; he would then maybe have appreciated and properly understood the new idea that she had in fact come up with. As indeed might have Lib Taylor, had she read the novel.
One issue that Gregg does raise is the apparent lack of drama in the play’s denouement. The real killer is identified by Fogg, and is singled out by him in front of a room full of people halfway through a long speech explaining how he has arrived at his conclusion. But the moment where the killer is identified can appear to be slightly ill-defined, relying on eye contact between accuser and accused at the point when the revelation is made. There is no violent reaction to the accusation. The accused listens impassively before remarking, ‘He deserved to die,’ adding, quite correctly, ‘You’re a clever man, Mr Fogg. But there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it,’ and then exiting. There is further dialogue amongst the characters left on stage but no final twist. Again, in the right hands this play should not require one; what has gone before should be sufficiently remarkable.
Gregg’s papers, like the Christie archive and indeed the Christie notebooks, give us very few clues about the genesis of Go Back for Murder; and a fire at Peter Saunders’ office in 1960 may account for the paucity of correspondence regarding this and other later Christie plays (although contractual and accounting material has been preserved). In Gregg’s papers there is, however, one letter about the play from Christie, who wrote to him three weeks after the opening to commiserate over the reviews: ‘Yes we’ve all copped it this time – even the music of Ravel did not escape. It’s a bit disheartening, I must say – still plays are like racehorses, always either amazing or disappointing their stables.’53 She goes on to comment that Gregg’s wife looked extremely glamorous and ‘could have done a much better job of being “irresistible” than our Elsa [Lisa Daniely]’, and that ‘I still feel I can do better over that ending. The space is so cramped that one feels Justin is picking someone by means of the pin trick.’
Christie goes on to point out in some detail that, as the accused had their back to the audience at the key moment, the audience saw no sign of a response to Fogg’s accusation. ‘You feel rather doubtful’ whether Fogg actually meant that person or whether they even heard him. She concludes that it would of course be different if the performer playing the accused ‘could act – but when they can’t they can’t and it wouldn’t have made any difference to the critics anyway!!’ Magnanimous as ever, it had nonetheless clearly not been lost on her that the production had been badly let down by the direction and some of the acting, as well as by attempting to squeeze the design into such a small space. It is interesting to note that, Christie had not been present for rehearsals of either Verdict or Go Back for Murder. It is all too easy to underestimate her own lively contribution to the rehearsal process.
Gregg quotes an unnamed critic in support of his thesis that Christie herself had botched the ending: ‘Agatha Clarissa Christie seems to have lost her corkscrew . . . the one she used with such effect to give those typical twist endings to her most successful mystery plays. This latest . . . is short of this one ingredient. Miss Christie has produced some 60 such crime pieces in book or play form varying on this basic formula. Here one wonders whether or not the variation imposes too much on director Hubert Gregg and his assistants.’54 The fact was that it clearly had; but in that case I would regard the fault as lying with the director rather than the playwright. Or, indeed, with the producer who appointed the director. J.B. Priestley’s seminal ‘time play’, Time and the Conways, had received its West End premiere at the Duchess Theatre in 1937; it was directed by Irene Hentschel. One can’t help but wonder how much better Christie’s own ‘time play’ might have fared had it been entrusted to her favourite director.
The nationwide appetite for Christie’s plays was undiminished by a second West End flop in three years, however; and, once again, the Hughes Massie sales ledgers bear witness to the enormous ongoing popularity of her work in regional theatres, with as many as half a dozen simultaneous repertory productions of a single title in the 1950s and 60s. In August 1961, The Stage reported on the Llandudno summer season:
Now firmly
established as one of the resort’s major attractions is the season of Agatha Christie thrillers which Harold Fielding and Melville Gillam present at the Palladium. It is some five years since the Palladium was first put to this use and wet or fine the company plays before full houses. This season’s plays, which are changed every Wednesday, are Verdict, Go Back for Murder and Murder on the Nile. The plays are proof that Mrs Christie reigns supreme as the queen of detective fiction and stage thrillers and the only regret felt by residents is that there are only three plays for them to view.55
The fact that legendary promoter Harold Fielding appears to have assembled a season consisting entirely of Christie’s worst flops is neither here nor there. And in this case we are, of course, straying perilously close to the pier, if not actually onto the end of it. But my point is that, irrespective of the context, similarly well-attended productions of Christie’s work would continue to take place up and down the country throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Irrespective of her West End fortunes, Agatha Christie was to remain, indisputably, the people’s playwright.