AND THEN THERE WERE NONE.
London
AND THEN THERE WERE NONE
by Agatha Christie new version by Kevin Elyot
Gielgud Theatre
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 10min One interval
TICKETS: 0870 890 1105
Review: Timothy Ramsden 31 October
And now there should be plenty of happy audience members – if there’s any justice.
Ranked with Shakespeare and Ayckbourn for audience popularity, Agatha Christie’s murder plots have gone missing from theatres recently. Apparently, the Christie estate wanted to disassociate them from cheap productions and go theatrically upmarket. There’s hardly a market more up than Kevin Elyot’s taut version with some fine performers as murderer, victims, or both. Add RSC/Chichester director Steven Pimlott, Mark Thompson’s stylish yet sinister sets plus composer Jason Carr’s evocative reminders of the rhyme behind the title and who could ask for anything more?
Elyot fixes the 1938 political context, implying social as well as personal guilt in the 10 individuals isolated on an island, facing crimes no court could convict. As vigilante-style unofficial justice is meted out Christie had her killer see off those admitting their crime first; those who deny their guilt suffering longest. Here, such consideration’s gone, while Elyot confirms the killer’s emotional satisfaction in murder.
Though Elyot and Pimlott supply a fair quota of visceral moments, the piece is remarkable as a story of serial killing in how little murdering’s in evidence. Several deaths occur offstage - just as well, for those that are seen risk the risible in the way blood and guts tend to with modern audiences. Others occur as simple deaths, needing subsequent explanation as murders. Yet the only scene that’s seriously underplayed is the final slug-out situation. The responsibility is Christie’s. As the survivors are reduced and it becomes clear one of the party must be the murderer, there’s a new dynamic to be investigated. But that’s not the kind of investigation an Agatha plot thrives on. So the final confrontation and the lone survivor’s eventual behaviour (for some dramatists, a whole possible play) is only lightly sketched.
The production superbly catches, though, the decline in the ever-reducing party. At the start they’re wheeled onstage at a table, set-up like the mysteriously reducing row of soldier-figurines displayed behind them, ordering food as in a smart restaurant. But as corpses outnumber live bodies, and the condemned survivors spoon meat from tins below stairs, Elyot, Pimlott, and company utterly achieve the Christie estate’s ambitions.
Justice Wargrave: Richard Johnson
Rogers: John Ramm
Anthony Marston: Sam Crane
General Macarthur: Graham Crowden
Emily Bent: Gemma Jones
Vera Claythorne: Tara Fitzgerald
Captain Lombard: Anthony Howell
Albert Blore: David Ross
Mrs Rogers: Katy Britain
Dr Edward Armstrong: Richard Clothier
Director: Steven Pimlott
Designer: Mark Thompson
Lighting: Hugh Vanstone
Sound: Gregory Clarke
Composer: Jason Carr
Voice/Dialect coach: Michaela Kennan
Fight director: Nick Hall
Assistant director: Andrew Wickes
Assistant Lighting designer: Fraser Hall
2005-11-02 10:13:23