Curtain Up
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But it wasn’t to be as simple as that. On 30 October 1961, Saunders wrote to the Lord Chamberlain’s office to request approval for two amendments in the script for The Rats. The first was to change a line of Sandra’s from ‘You swine, you swine!’ to ‘You bastard! You filthy, rotten bastard!’; the censor has written ‘OK’ in blue ink next to this, and the word ‘YES’ is then written in red ink. The second was to change David’s line describing Alec’s love for Sandra’s first husband from ‘one of those unnatural, hysterical devotions I should guess’ to ‘Alex [sic] – obviously a homo – it was that kind of devotion I should guess.’ Next to this, the censor has written in blue ink ‘Why? I see no reason for underlining this character’, and the word ‘NO’ is written in red ink.69
On 2 November, the Lord Chamberlain’s office wrote to Saunders stating, ‘The following dialogue is allowed: “You bastard! You filthy, rotten bastard.” The following dialogue is not allowed: “Alex – obviously a homo – it was that kind of devotion I should guess.”’70 Under this, on the copy of the letter now held in the Lord Chamberlain’s Plays archive, someone has handwritten (as if scribbled in rehearsals and sent straight back) ‘Alex – obviously a queer’ (to which the censor writes ‘NO’) and ‘Alex – obviously a bit feminine’ (next to which the censor has written ‘YES’). In a letter to Saunders dated 4 November, Assistant Comptroller E. Penn then states, ‘I am desired by the Lord Chamberlain to inform you that the lines “Alex – obviously a bit feminine – it was that kind of devotion, I should guess,” submitted by you on 3 November, have been passed for inclusion in the licensed manuscript of the above play.’71 After all that, the published version we now know has replaced this hard-won line with ‘You’ve only got to take one look at Alec to see what kind of devotion that was.’
The proposed use of the word ‘homo’ in this context is deliberately pejorative, and is intended to tell us as much about the prejudices of David, who speaks the line, as it does about Alec himself. The replacement line does not really serve this purpose, which is doubtless why it was itself eventually replaced. Six years later, the Sexual Offences Act would finally decriminalise homosexual acts carried out in private between men; whatever The Mousetrap’s Miss Casewell or Go Back for Murder’s Angela Warren were getting up to in private had never been the concern of the law. The following year, the Lord Chamberlain’s role in censoring plays ended. And the year after that, man landed on the moon.
The production opened to mixed reviews in Aberdeen on 6 November 1961 and toured to Glasgow, Oxford, Newcastle and Blackpool. The programme from Oxford presents us with the delightful prospect of the evening being punctuated by performances from the theatre’s ‘resident orchestra’.72 Agatha and Max were visiting Kashmir and Iran throughout this period; Max, who had recently been made a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, was involved with the Institute of Persian Studies in Tehran. Christie remained in communication by telegram while she was travelling, and a series of detailed letters sent by Saunders and Cork to her care of the British Embassy in Iran (‘Persia’ according to Saunders) awaited her arrival there. It is notable that, whereas in 1931 Agatha had hurried back from Nineveh in the hope of seeing the premiere of Chimneys at the little Embassy Theatre in Swiss Cottage, she was now prioritising her travels with Max, and seemed happy enough to leave Saunders and his team to their own devices. Following the failures of her brave theatrical experiments with Verdict and Go Back for Murder, the short-lived re-emergence of A Daughter’s a Daughter, the faked collaboration on Towards Zero and the success of the relatively formulaic The Unexpected Guest, it is hardly surprising that, at the age of seventy-one, Agatha appears to have lost some of her appetite for the processes of theatrical production.
Saunders’ report on the Aberdeen premiere, written three days later, reads:
Starting with the worst, I should say right away that I didn’t like The Rats at all and I don’t think that I ever shall. (Let me interpose here and say that Edmund, I think, likes it the best of the three.) Hubert worked all day on it yesterday, but there are difficulties that I am not sure we can ever get over. When you see Alec in his gloves taking the knife out of the sheath and ‘casually’ handing it to the girl, about a quarter of the audience got the implication. When he opened the chest, I think 99 per cent realised what was going on. This means that the play is just a slanging match, with an ending that doesn’t ring true. After all, why should the man commit suicide for a murder he may not be charged with, and in any case didn’t commit? I spoke to Rosalind, and she had spoken to Cecil Mallowan [Max’s brother] who also disliked this play, but thought it was bad acting. Yet he liked the acting in the other two plays which, of course, included the same people.73
It is apparent from this that the play opened in the version, approved by the Lord Chamberlain’s office, that includes Alec’s murder of John as part of the action of the piece, and in which David exits to the balcony at the end, inspired by Alec’s carefully planted suggestion that jumping from it would be a good way to end it all.
Saunders was much happier with the second play:
Afternoon at the Seaside is quite delightful in every way. It is light, gay and amusing, but still has a twist at the end, and I had nostalgic memories of Spider’s Web, and wondered what would have happened had you written it as a full-length play . . . it was certainly the hit of the evening.
Patient . . . the ending was rather strange. We used the prose rather than the poetry ending, and when your voice said ‘Who do you think is behind the curtain?’ by some sixth sense the audience seemed to realise immediately that it was your voice, and there was such a hubbub that your next few words weren’t heard. For one moment I thought the idea was going to be a terrific success, but when the audience realised it was your voice telling them that they weren’t going to be given the answer, there was a wave of disappointment that could be felt. No-one actually threw anything, but I asked the Manager of the theatre to enquire from various patrons he knew, and without exception they all said very uncomplimentary things about not being told who did it.
Saunders goes on to say that they had since been using a different ending where a recorded voice highlighted key clues before a curtain was drawn back to reveal the culprit. This, apparently, was a ‘spectacular success’. Saunders’ plan was to make sure Rosalind saw both versions in Oxford: ‘What she doesn’t know yet is that she is going to make the final decision. I haven’t broken that to her yet. The ending is such a personal thing, that I feel it far better that in your absence she should decide rather than the combination of Edmund, Hubert and myself.’ He goes on to note that, in the event that he fails to secure a West End theatre, ‘the whole thing is self-solving’ and Agatha will be able to make her own decision about the ending, based on recordings of each of them in performance, along with the audience’s reaction.’
Cork sent Christie his own appraisal of Rule of Three’s opening:
The reception on the first night at Aberdeen was on balance both friendly and favourable. The Rats did not come over quite as well as we had hoped. It is pretty difficult to get over that claustrophobic sense of horror on a wide stage and in such a big theatre, but I think the production can be tightened up (and incidentally Hubert Gregg agrees with me while Peter does not) and that it will be all right when it comes to town. Afternoon at the Seaside was an absolute riot – I really had no idea it could please an audience so much. The Patient was played on the first night without the solution being given. Your record asking the audience what they thought the answer was came over well, but I fear it rather upset the audience . . . I’m afraid the general feeling was one of frustration, and actually one gaggle in the foyer used the word ‘swindle’, which I did not like at all. . . . by and large it looks as though the customers are there for easy entertainment, and are inclined to resent the riddle they cannot answer. I am very sorry to have to report in this way, but there it is.74
He also explained the plan to involve Rosalind in decidin
g which ending to use, and warned Agatha that ‘Goodnight Mrs Puffin has caught on at the Duchess, so it seems unlikely that Peter will be able to chuck them out before Christmas – you will recall he had to take over the previous owner’s contract with these people. Peter is exploring every avenue – not by any means limited to “Shaftesbury” – but I am afraid there is nothing definite to report at the moment.’
When Saunders had taken possession of the Duchess on 2 October he was obliged to honour the contract with the incumbent production, Arthur Lovegrove’s hugely popular comedy, starring Irene Handl, which had transferred from the Strand Theatre only two weeks previously. As the landlord, he would have been unable to terminate the production’s contract with the theatre unless its weekly income fell below its weekly costs.
On 5 December 1961, Cork wrote to Christie, now in India:
I entirely agree with you that it would have been marvellous to get it into the West End for Christmas, but alas, the last hope – the Comedy [Theatre] – faded away yesterday. This is not personal to us, as there are five plays that have been doing excellent business in the country that are having to fold up as they cannot get into the West End. There was certainly part of the audience at Oxford that liked Triple Bill but unfortunately the business for the preceding and succeeding week [i.e. for other plays appearing at Oxford’s New Theatre] amounted in each case to twice what we played to. Peter is coming to think that our best hope of getting a success at any other time than Christmas is to get a star in the bill, but this might involve more re-writing than you would want to undertake. Anyway, this problem is one that can wait until you get home again.75
Saunders wrote on the same day to confirm the postponement of the West End transfer: ‘At least it gives us the time to reassess the position with your help rather than in your absence . . . we are now playing the Patient with the ending that you wrote, i.e. the Inspector disclosing who it was, and I think that this is probably the best thing, anyway until you come back.’ Rosalind’s role as arbitrator was not, in the end, required, and a version similar to the one that we now have in which the inspector names the culprit as they step from behind a curtain, was used for the remainder of the first tour.
There in fact appear to have been a number of attempts to create a new ending for The Patient during the course of the first tour, even including one put forward by the stage manager in which the villain of the piece commits suicide, for which a script still survives in the Gregg papers. ‘Can you imagine Agatha’s face!’ wrote Saunders to Gregg.76 In Gregg’s rehearsal script The Patient simply ends:
INSPECTOR: So now let’s see if you’re who I think you are. (Lays hold of screen) . . .
The rest of the page is then torn out, with the words END TO FOLLOW written in blue ink.77
It seems to me unlikely that Saunders would have pursued the idea of a West End run for Rule of Three at the end of 1961 with any great enthusiasm. He evidently felt that work needed to be done on the piece, and with Christie away travelling, there was little prospect of this being carried out. Lack of theatre availability is the classic excuse offered to playwrights by reluctant producers, followed closely by the need for star casting, and Saunders may well in any case have wanted to ensure that he could eventually host the piece at the Duchess once it had been rewritten and Mrs Puffin had flown. It is also apparent from his correspondence with Hubert Gregg that they were less than happy with the cast they had assembled; of thirteen who opened in Aberdeen only five were re-engaged for the West End the following year, although some of them, of course, may not have been available. The halcyon days of casting Richard Attenborough and Margaret Lockwood in Christie plays, although relatively recent, seemed long gone.
Auditions were held for cast replacements, and amongst the candidates turned down for a role was Honor Blackman, much to Saunders and Gregg’s subsequent embarrassment; her first episodes in The Avengers were broadcast in the autumn of 1962, as Rule of Three finally made its way into the West End, and two years later she was to play Pussy Galore in Goldfinger. Amongst those re-engaged from the first tour was Margot Boyd, who had notably achieved a good review in the role of Miss Williams in Go Back for Murder. Christie, it has to be said, had done her producer and director no favours on the casting front by concocting an evening of three short plays consisting of a four-hander guignol, a nine-hander melodrama and a twelve-hander comedy, and it is clear from Gregg’s notes, and Saunders’ payroll, that the casting process was challenging on a number of levels.
In August 1962, Gregg wrote a six-page letter to Saunders from his place in the Algarve which discussed various matters relating to the remounting of the production. The first thing it addressed was the vexed issue of the staging of Alec’s murder of John inside the chest without the audience, Sandra or David noticing:
If Alec kills John before the action of the play begins there is no reason for the air holes. It is unlikely that John would lie in the chest alive while Alec drills the air holes. . . . Alec wouldn’t have stabbed John outside the chest because of cluttering the place with blood, etc. If he stabbed him inside, as I say, why bore holes? Moreover, too, there’s something chilling about the idea of a live man lying there listening. Alec may have managed the stabbing badly, or the fault may have been mine if you felt that the audience weren’t held here. My own feeling was they were interested in the antics of Alec – in his movement about the room and, if some of the audience realise the truth (that he was stabbing a man) they were elated at their own cleverness. If you feel strongly enough by all means let John be dead before the curtain rises. But I think if we do this we are shying away from what I’m sure Agatha intends to be the high spot of the play, ‘John was killed more or less in front of our eyes’. Remember that the stabbing is the only real ‘introduction’ of John to the audience. If we have just a box with a stiff in it does the description by David of what must have happened lose impact? Why don’t we sort this out in, or just before, rehearsal? Perhaps with Agatha? Even see it performed as is once again before deciding?78
Hubert Gregg’s papers contain a loose-leaf copy of a four-page additional scene, evidently intended to be a new opening for the play, in which we actually meet John, so that the three-hander that became a four-hander is now a five-hander. ‘As the curtain rises, Alec is kneeling beside the chest drilling holes. He is in morning dress, but minus his coat, which is thrown over a nearby chair. John Grey, a pleasant, well built man is pacing restlessly.’79 They are preparing the chest so that John can lie in it and eavesdrop on Sandra and her lover, and Alec is provoking John with tales of his wife’s infidelity:
ALEC: A pity you’re so old fashioned, John.
JOHN: What do you mean?
ALEC: The modern husband knows how to accept infidelity, I’m told. You’re not like that.
Alec, who has been to a royal garden party, has gained entry to the flat using a key that he had cut for his friend ‘Benjy’ when they were using it together during the owners’ absence. He clears up the sawdust, looks down at his dustpan and brush, and remarks, ‘Quite the little housemaid, aren’t I?’ John eventually gets into the chest, but just as he does Alec suddenly ‘draws the knife from behind his back and stabs John, out of sight of the audience. Apparently, he wipes the knife clean on the embroidery. Then he goes to replace the Kurdish knife in its sheath. He closes the lid of the chest, and begins to dust, carefully removing fingerprints.’
This scene was presumably written before rehearsals started for the second production, in order to deal with some of the issues raised in the correspondence between Saunders and Gregg. It provides a less unlikely scenario than Alec successfully killing John in the chest without the two other people in the room noticing, but still gives the audience the frisson of the eventual realisation that the murder was effectively carried out before their very eyes. The scene was never submitted to the Lord Chamberlain’s office, so it can never have been tried out in performance, and no author is credited. There are no references to it
in Christie’s notes or draft material, so there is a possibility that it was actually written by Gregg. If that is the case then I have to take my hat off to him for an excellent fake.
Gregg’s letter to Saunders goes on to discuss casting the new production of Rule of Three at some length, reviewing the previous actors’ performances and suggesting who should be re-engaged and who replaced. The first tour had included a notable appearance by a poodle belonging to one of the actors, but it seems that the actor concerned must have been amongst those being considered for replacement: ‘the dog would be a serious “miss”’, says Gregg, ‘I certainly think we should have one.’ It is not clear whether they succeeded in finding a substitute canine.
Gregg also touches on the dilemma that Saunders was facing in his new role as theatre owner. It seems that Goodnight Mrs Puffin had been playing to poor box office figures during the summer of 1962, at last giving Saunders the opportunity to terminate its contract at the Duchess. But this would have been too early to assist with the West End scheduling of Rule of Three, and in any case a successful comedy could expect its business to pick up as Christmas approached. ‘What a difficult decision you have re Puffin’, wrote Gregg. ‘Can you make them transfer if they climb above their break figure after falling below it? Indeed would you want to – not only from the kindness view but from the business angle? What you want is another theatre of your own. Simple.’ Saunders wrote straight back to Gregg confirming that three weeks of rehearsal would commence on 29 October, with a tour opening on 19 November and the West End run in the week of 17 December.80 Saunders makes it clear that this is contingent on Christie herself being available for the first performance week; her absence had been felt the previous year, when the production got off to its false start.