Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, adapted for stage by Ken Ludwig, at Cheltenham Everyman until Saturday, May 3
It might put you off buying a ticket for the Orient Express in winter… But do buy a ticket for the Everyman’s night of Agatha Christie, says Katie Jarvis. It would be a crime to miss it
You have to be both quick and observant to pick up clues in an Agatha Christie whodunit. As we take our seats, a loud, deep, atmospheric whistle fills the air, getting us in the mood for the evening to come.
Ian’s ears prick. ‘That’s a boat,’ he says, quickly and observantly.
‘It’s a steam train,’ I say. ‘Honestly not the mystery.’
We’re here to see Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express: a stonking whodunit, where the audience are traditionally asked not to reveal the price of a train ticket, on leaving the theatre. Or something.
(Spoiler — please do look away now if you don’t want to know. It’s £24,519 for an 11-day journey. (Though prices vary greatly according to cabin type, etc.))
Why?
Because it’s fiction. We’re allowed to enjoy terrible deeds when we know they’re not true (or are far enough away in time for it to be acceptable).
Except. Murder on the Orient Express isn’t quite as clear-cut as that.
And that makes it a challenge, in many ways, for a stage adaptation.
And those events involve a collection of first-class (in every sense) passengers on a luxury train, heading out of a snowy Istanbul. So snowy, in fact, that the train soon comes to a grinding halt in the middle of nowhere.
Then… horror.
One of their number — the objectionable Samuel Ratchett (a delightfully distasteful Simon Cotton) — is found dead. Even more dead than most: for the number of stab wounds on his body is generous.
But, again: how does this all relate to the tragic story of the little girl that opened our evening?
Something that must have puzzled director Lucy Bailey very much indeed; for — when you drill down into it — this is a whodunit with a much deeper range of difficult emotions than many of Christie’s murder-mysteries.
And I’d say that Lucy Bailey has done a very, very good job.
To the way the action takes place within carriages on stage: convincing; claustrophobic; clue-ful.
The list of suspects (formerly known as characters) is a delight: the wonderful, multiply married Helen Hubbard (joyfully portrayed by Christine Kavanagh), whose chippy, witty sparring with Princess Natalia Dragomiroff (the fabulous Debbie Chazen) (and, boy, the costumes are great) goes down a treat.
I also loved Bob Barrett’s M Bouc: I’m not convinced he’d be allowed to run a buffet trolley, never mind the company behind the Orient Express; but no matter. His comic turns never failed to elicit a laugh.
Let’s face it: the whole cast — and the creatives behind them — can pat themselves on the back. This is an evening to sit back and enjoy.
Pah, I say.
Who cares.
What is interesting is the way the emotion shifts — as well it should — during this evening. It’s a clever (not said insensitively) trick to pull off. And I think Lucy Bailey does exactly that.
When Christie wrote this book, she was inspired both by her own more mundane experiences on the train; and by an appalling true-life crime that has never — to this day — been (many claim) solved: the kidnap and murder of the young son of American aviator Charles Lindbergh in 1932: two years before the novel was published.
It’s difficult: we have, in our day and age, our own sorrows on this front. But let’s just say that, at least, this play is one way of helping to process those emotions.
Everyman Theatre, Regent Street, Cheltenham GL50 1HQ; 01242 572573; everymantheatre.org.uk
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