Curtain Up

by Julius Green

  That Saunders ran this article with pride in a publication of his own indicates that he was happy to be known as the man responsible for the ‘overthrow’ of Tennents; and the plays with which he achieved this extraordinary David and Goliath feat were, of course, Christie’s.

  After Christie’s death, third-party adaptations of her novels continued to arrive in the West End with depressing regularity, confusing and sullying her own reputation as a playwright. Saunders himself was responsible for commissioning and producing two pedestrian adaptations from Leslie Darbon: A Murder is Announced (1977), starring Dulcie Gray as Miss Marple, and Cards on the Table (1981), both presented at his own Vaudeville Theatre. The less said about these ventures the better, and Saunders, of all people, should arguably have been more respectful of Christie’s dramatic legacy; although she had agreed to the adaptation of A Murder is Announced before her death and at least Poirot was cut from Cards on the Table, as she no doubt would have wished. In 1993 Clive Exton’s adaptation of Murder is Easy played for a few weeks at the Duke of York’s and in 2005 Kevin Elyot’s unnecessary new adaptation of the novel And Then There Were None played for a few months at the Gielgud, giving the story, according to press announcements, a ‘pulp fiction revamp’ which was ‘awash with blood’.6 I saw it, and it was. Another unnecessary adaptation was Louise Page’s new version of Love From a Stranger, premiered at the Mill at Sonning in 2010. Christie herself had a very low opinion of other people’s dramatic tinkerings with her work but, with yet more stage adaptations in the pipeline, it seems that her own remarkable legacy as a dramatist is doomed to recede ever further towards a hidden horizon.

  In 1992, British Telecom controversially ended a major sponsorship deal with the Royal Shakespeare Company in favour of supporting a sadly rather low-rent commercial tour of Witness for the Prosecution. Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington was outraged: ‘Why in heaven’s name switch their support from the greatest popular dramatist in history to arguably the worst popular dramatist of this century?’ he demanded. ‘Where BT once got brownie-points for backing Shakespeare tours, I see no kudos arising from its association with Mrs C.’7 British Telecom, however, were more than happy to eschew ‘kudos’ in favour of reaching the widest possible audience demographic over a forty-week nationwide tour. Their spokesman said, ‘It is important to note that traditionally sponsorship from major companies is directed towards opera, ballet and classical theatre. BT recognises that in serving the whole of the community which in turn are probably BT subscribers in every socio-economic group, we should address as large a segment of the population as possible.’8 Like the People’s Entertainment Society, BT had recognised Christie’s status as the people’s playwright. The irony was that Christie herself would have regarded Shakespeare as fulfilling that brief.

  Billington’s appraisal of Christie’s work is based on his belief that ‘She is a lousy dramatist precisely because her dialogue is a function of plot rather than an index of character. I can still hear, from the days when I worked in rep, the agonising groans that used to go up from actors when forced to animate the walking dead in yet another revival of Peril at End House.’ I hope that this book has gone some way towards challenging that preconception, but in any event I would respectfully point out that, as a national newspaper’s theatre critic, Mr Billington should be aware that Peril at End House is not in fact an Agatha Christie play.

  Gwen Robyns asks, ‘Will Agatha Christie’s plays stand the test of time like those of Somerset Maugham or Noël Coward? They may date . . . but they do recall a visual nostalgia for a middle-class way of life that will never return to England. Of spacious, chintzy country houses, cultivated morning-room talk, impeccable servants, bowls of potpourri, croquet on the lawn, Earl Grey tea poured from Georgian silver, and wafer-thin brown bread cucumber sandwiches. Perhaps this is what many of us are longing for.’9

  This misrepresentation of Christie as a playwright is by no means unique to Robyns, and seems to be some sort of confusion with the image portrayed in film and television adaptations of some of her novels or, indeed with plays adapted from her work by third parties. Of the fifteen of her own plays which were performed in her lifetime, few come anywhere close to the setting described above, and even those that do are notable for the absence of cucumber sandwiches, Earl Grey tea and croquet on the lawn.

  And Then There Were None, The Hollow, The Mousetrap, Witness for the Prosecution, Spider’s Web and The Unexpected Guest are six substantial, hugely successful plays which between them represent a notable contribution to the British dramatic repertoire. The less successful Black Coffee, Murder on the Nile, Appointment with Death, Verdict, Go Back for Murder and Rule of Three are a further six that continue to do very well off the back of the others. A Daughter’s a Daughter, Fiddlers Three, Akhnaton (premiered on the fringe after Christie’s death) and Chimneys remain barely performed and do not form part of the established Christie canon. The version of Towards Zero that she didn’t write continues to be performed and included in anthologies, whilst the one that she did write has never been published, and has not been produced since its week at Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse. The Wasp’s Nest has never been given the stage presentation for which it was written, and a short play possibly intended for puppets has been published but not performed. A further five full-length plays and six one-act plays remain unpublished and, as far as we know, unperformed.

  Christie’s two masterpieces of dramatic construction, Witness for the Prosecution and And Then There Were None, are not detective stories and represent, in each case, the absolute pinnacle of their respective genres: often imitated but never bettered. Meanwhile, The Lie, A Daughter’s a Daughter and Verdict give a tantalising glimpse of the playwright that Christie might have been had she not acceded to the seemingly unending demand for thrillers from her producers and audiences. As we have seen, much of her early work, like that of Clemence Dane, examines then much-debated issues such as divorce and eugenics; she even, in the mid-1920s, took on the subject of what was at that time regarded as incest. In The Mousetrap, the lady of the house struggles across the stage with a carpet sweeper four years before the sight of a woman doing the ironing caused a sensation at the Royal Court, and in 1961 the censor banned her from using the word ‘homo’ three years before Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane. In The Last Séance the stage was literally ‘awash with blood’ and in Fiddlers Five, to the horror of her family, the newly appointed Dame appeared to condone hoodwinking the taxman.

  Christie colluded with neither the patriarchy nor the censor with respect to the content of her plays, which consistently and wittily subverted both. However, in order to get her work to the stage, and thus gain access to the theatrical world and companionship that she so cherished, she was frequently obliged to dance to other people’s tunes. Or at least to appear to. Christie’s theatrical fortunes were, of course, inextricably linked to those of Peter Saunders, but it is important to remember that, for her, playwriting was a source of creative fulfilment rather then necessary income, and that the ‘Midas gift’ of her theatrical imagination gave audiences an extraordinary range of work that often challenged and surprised them.

  I will leave the last word with Agatha herself, as she describes the first night of Witness for the Prosecution:

  I was happy, radiantly happy, and made even more so by the applause of the audience. I slipped away as usual after the curtain came down on my ending and out into Long Acre. In a few moments, while I was looking for a waiting car, I was surrounded by crowds of friendly people, quite ordinary members of the audience, who recognised me, patted me on the back and encouraged me – ‘Best you’ve written, dearie!’ ‘First class-thumbs up, I’d say!’ ‘V-signs for this one!’ and ‘Loved every minute of it!’ Autograph books were produced and I signed cheerfully and happily. My self-consciousness and nervousness, just for once, were not with me. Yes it was a memorable evening. I am proud of it still. And every now and then I dig into the memory chest, b
ring it out, take a look at it, and say ‘That was the night, that was!’10

  Bibliography

  With a small number of exceptions, plays referred to in this book by writers other than Agatha Christie are not included in this bibliography. Similarly, novels and short stories by Agatha Christie that are referred to but which were not adapted for the stage in her lifetime are not listed here. There are numerous websites and books offering ‘definitive’ lists of Christie’s published work and, of these, Robert Barnard’s A Talent to Deceive (Collins, 1980) includes a particularly helpful record of the UK and US publication histories of her novels and short stories in book form in her lifetime. Publication dates listed below are for UK first editions unless otherwise indicated.

  ACA = The Agatha Christie Archive (Christie Archive Trust)

  LCP = Lord Chamberlain’s Plays collection, British Library

  The Plays of Agatha Christie

  Plays that were performed in Agatha Christie’s lifetime appear in the order in which they were premiered. Others appear in approximate order of writing.

  A Masque from Italy

  Original one-act stage play

  Typescript in ACA

  Unperformed

  First published: The Road of Dreams, Geoffrey Bles, 1924

  The Conqueror

  Original one-act stage play

  Typescript in ACA

  Unperformed/unpublished

  Teddy Bear

  Original one-act stage play

  Typescript in ACA

  Unperformed/unpublished

  Eugenia and Eugenics

  Original one-act stage play

  Typescript in ACA

  Unperformed/unpublished

  The Clutching Hand

  Full-length stage play

  Adapted from: The Exploits of Elaine (novel by Arthur B. Reeve: Hearst’s International Library, USA, 1915/Hodder & Stoughton, 1915)

  Typescript in ACA

  Unperformed/unpublished

  The Last Séance

  Original one-act stage play

  Typescript in ACA

  Unperformed

  Play unpublished. Published as short story in The Hound of Death, Odhams, 1933

  Ten Years

  Original one-act stage play

  Typescript in ACA

  Unperformed/unpublished

  Marmalade Moon

  Original one-act stage play

  Typescript in ACA

  Unperformed/unpublished

  The Lie

  Original full-length stage play

  Typescript in ACA

  Unperformed/unpublished

  Chimneys

  Full-length stage play

  Adapted from: The Secret of Chimneys (novel: John Lane, 1925)

  Typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1931/40

  First performed: 16 October 2003, Vertigo Theatre, Calgary

  Unpublished

  1930: Black Coffee

  Original full-length stage play

  No typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1930/52

  First performed: 8 December 1930, Embassy Theatre, London

  First published: Alfred Ashley, 1934

  The Wasp’s Nest

  One-act stage play

  Adapted from: ‘The Wasp’s Nest’ (short story: originally published in Daily Mail, 20 Nov 1928, included in Double Sin, Dodd, Mead & Co., USA, 1961/Poirot’s Early Cases, Collins, 1974)

  Typescript in ACA

  Unperformed on stage (broadcast on BBC Television, 18 June 1937)

  Unpublished

  The Stranger

  Full-length stage play

  Adapted from: ‘Philomel Cottage’ (short story: included in The Listerdale Mystery, Collins, 1934)

  Typescript in ACA

  Unperformed/unpublished

  Someone at the Window

  Full-length stage play

  Adapted from: ‘The Dead Harlequin’ (short story: included in The Mysterious Mr Quin, Collins, 1930)

  Typescript in ACA

  Unperformed/unpublished

  Akhnaton

  Original full-length stage play

  Typescript in ACA

  First performed: Fountains Abbey Pub Theatre, London, January 1980

  First published: Collins, 1973

  1943: Ten Little Niggers (aka Ten Little Indians/And Then There Were None)

  Full-length stage play

  Adapted from: Ten Little Niggers (novel: Collins, 1939)

  No typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1943/16

  First performed: 20 September 1943, Wimbledon Theatre, London

  First published: Samuel French, 1944

  1944: Hidden Horizon (aka Murder on the Nile)

  Full-length stage play

  Adapted from: Death on the Nile (novel: Collins, 1937)

  Typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1943/35

  First performed: 17 January 1944, Dundee Repertory Theatre

  First published: Samuel French, 1948

  1945: Appointment with Death

  Full-length stage play

  Adapted from: Appointment with Death (novel: Collins, 1938)

  No typescript in ACA. LCP Ref:1944/39

  First performed: 29 January 1945, King’s Theatre, Glasgow

  First published: Samuel French, 1956

  1945: Towards Zero

  Full-length stage play

  Adapted from: Towards Zero (novel: Collins, 1944)

  Typescript in ACA, donated by the Shubert Organisation

  First performed: Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse, 4 September 1945

  Unpublished

  1951: The Hollow (aka The Suspects)

  Full-length stage play

  Adapted from: The Hollow (novel: Collins, 1946)

  No typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1950/62

  First performed: 5 February 1951, Cambridge Arts Theatre

  First published: Samuel French, 1952

  1952: The Mousetrap

  Full-length stage play

  Adapted from: Three Blind Mice (radio play: broadcast by the BBC, 30 May 1947) and ‘Three Blind Mice’ (short story: included in Three Blind Mice, Dodd, Mead & Co., USA, 1950)

  Typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1952/45

  First performed: 6 October 1952, Theatre Royal, Nottingham

  First published: Samuel French, 1954

  1953: Witness for the Prosecution

  Full-length stage play

  Adapted from: ‘The Witness for the Prosecution’ (short story: included in The Hound of Death, Odhams, 1933)

  Typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1953/46

  First performed: 28 September 1953, Theatre Royal, Nottingham

  First published: Samuel French, 1954

  1954: Spider’s Web

  Original full-length stage play

  Typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1954/47

  First performed: 27 September 1954, Theatre Royal, Nottingham

  First published: Samuel French, 1957

  1956: A Daughter’s a Daughter by Mary Westmacott

  Original full-length stage play

  Typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1956/35

  First performed: 9 July 1956, Theatre Royal, Bath

  Play unpublished. Published as novel by Mary Westmacott: Heinemann, 1952

  1958: Verdict

  Original full-length stage play

  Typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1957/56

  First performed: 25 February 1958, Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton

  First published: Samuel French, 1958

  1958: The Unexpected Guest

  Original full-length stage play

  No typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1958/30

  First performed: 4 August 1958, Hippodrome, Bristol

  First published: Samuel French, 1958

  1960: Go Back for Murder

  Full-length stage play

  Adapted from: Five Little Pigs (novel: Dodd, Mead & Co., USA, as Murder In Restrospect, 1942; Collins, 1943)

  No typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1960/5

  First performed:
22 February 1960, King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

  First published: Samuel French, 1960

  1962: Rule of Three (The Rats, Afternoon at the Seaside, The Patient)

  Three original one-act stage plays

  Typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1961/49

  First performed: 6 November 1961, His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen

  First published (individually): Samuel French, 1963

  Miss Perry

  Original full-length stage play

  Typescript in ACA

  Unperformed/unpublished

  1971: Fiddlers Five (aka Fiddlers Three)

  Original full-length stage play

  Typescript in ACA

  First performed: 7 June 1971, King’s Theatre, Southsea

  Unpublished

  Plays adapted from Agatha Christie’s work in her lifetime by other writers

  Alibi (aka The Fatal Alibi)

  Adapted by Michael Morton from The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (novel: Collins, 1926)

  First published: Samuel French, 1929

  Love from a Stranger

  Adapted by Frank Vosper from The Stranger (original stage play: unpublished/ACA)

  Published: Collins, 1936/Samuel French, 1937

  Tea for Three