Curtain Up (14 page)

In the end,
Black Coffee
itself was to enjoy only a very short West End run. Reviews of the new production were not unfavourable, and the
Observer
's influential Ivor Brown noted, ‘Mr Francis Sullivan prudently refraining from a Charles Laughton pastiche does not tie the “character” labels all over the part, but plays it quietly and firmly, trusting that the story will do its own work of entertainment.' But he concluded, ‘Black Coffee is supposed to be a strong stimulant and powerful enemy of sleep. I found the title optimistic.'
³¹

Reandco soon found that they needed the St Martin's in order to gain a West End foothold for another production; as
The Times
reported: ‘In order that Messrs. Reandco may present Mr Ronald Jeans's new play
Lean Harvest
at the St Martin's Theatre on Thursday next, Mrs Agatha Christie's play
Black Coffee
will be transferred on Monday to the Wimbledon Theatre, and on the following Monday, May 11, it will resume its interrupted run at the Little Theatre.'
³²
Although Reandco owned the lease on the St Martin's, Bertie Meyer remained the building's licensee on behalf of its freeholders, the Willoughby de Broke family. Having enjoyed a successful association with the Little Theatre as a producer, he was doubtless instrumental in facilitating
Black Coffee
's transfer there, although he was not directly involved with the production.
Black Coffee
was sent away from the West End to Wimbledon in order to fill an unsatisfactory week's gap between its scheduling at the St Martin's and the Little. But the production never really recovered from this disruption, and closed on 13 June.

Between the St Martin's and the Little Theatre,
Black Coffee
had completed a total of sixty-seven West End performances over two months, which was, at least, slightly longer than
The Claimant
's run. Agatha herself missed her West End debut as a playwright, as she had by then joined her new husband at the archaeological dig in Ur.

Since Agatha's response to
Alibi
had been to write
Chimneys
, a play without Poirot, it was ironic that the first work of hers to be presented in the West End should have featured the character. Not only the first play of hers to be performed but quite possibly the first full-length stage play she wrote,
Black Coffee
was – significantly – an original script rather than being adapted from one of her novels. It was to be more than twenty years until the premiere of the next Christie play that was not based on a novel.

In the autumn of 1931 Max Mallowan relocated his archaeological work in Iraq to Nineveh, and at Christmas Agatha hurried home in the hope of catching the premiere of
Chimneys
,
which Reandco had now scheduled for a December opening at the Embassy, clearly in the hope of enabling a West End transfer as they had done the previous year with
Black Coffee
.

The fate of
Chimneys
has taken on an almost mythical status amongst Christie scholars as a ‘play that never was'. Having been advertised as opening at the Embassy, gone into rehearsal and been licensed by the Lord Chamberlain, it suddenly disappeared from their schedule, apparently without explanation. It was not heard of again until it was unearthed by Canadian director John Paul Fishbach in 2001 and given its world premiere in Calgary in 2003, almost twenty-eight years after Christie's death. As is often the case with matters theatrical, however, the reality of the ‘
Chimneys
mystery' was far more prosaic than may at first appear, and those previously attempting to establish the facts of the matter may have enjoyed more success if Agatha had dated her letters with the year as well as the day and month. Once her letters are placed in the correct sequence, the order of events surrounding the cancelled production becomes apparent.

There are in fact no fewer than four copies of the script amongst Christie's papers, all of them very similar. Three of these are duplicates, two clearly dated 5 July 1928 by the Marshall's typing agency stamp and carrying Agatha's address in Ashfield, Torquay. The unstamped duplicate carries the Hughes Massie label and has been annotated in pencil by the actress playing the role of Bundle. The fourth copy includes some slight variations in the typescript and handwritten notes by Agatha, and has the Hughes Massie address handwritten on it. The first point to establish, therefore, is that the script itself never actually ‘disappeared', even if the scheduled premiere production appears to have done; assuming that Fishbach's copy is now amongst those at the archive, we know of at least four other ‘originals', including the one lodged with the Lord Chamberlain's office. Hughes Massie's records show that Reandco acquired the rights in the play as early as 22 April 1931, shortly after the opening of their West End run of
Black Coffee
, for production at the Embassy Theatre within six months
of signature and with a West End option to be taken up within six weeks of the Embassy production.
³³
This time the sale had been co-ordinated by Hughes Massie themselves. As was standard practice, the royalties payable by the Embassy, as a small repertory theatre, were at the reduced rate of 5 per cent of box office income. Although the scheduling of the production would be subject to the vagaries of the repertory system and its short lead times, Reandco clearly wanted to ensure that the next Christie play would appear as part of their own repertoire rather than someone else's.

The Times
of Thursday 19 November 1931 duly announced that ‘The next production at the Embassy Theatre will be
Chimneys
, by Agatha Christie, which Mr A.R. Whatmore will produce [i.e. direct] on Thursday 1 December.' This was slightly outside their six-month option period, but that would not have been an issue for a management of good standing who had given Christie her West End premiere, and an informal extension of the option had doubtless been negotiated. Based on the previous year's experience, Rea and Whatmore clearly felt that a pre-Christmas Christie at the Embassy was a good formula for box-office success.

On the same day as
The Times
's announcement,
Chimneys
arrived at the Lord Chamberlain's office. Act One of the script submitted to the Lord Chamberlain is clearly from a different copy of the play to the rest of it, and includes rehearsal notes written in pencil apparently by the actor playing Lord Caterham.
³⁴
Interestingly, the list of characters at the front shows evidence of what appears to have been an earlier attempt to cast the production, with ‘Wolfit' pencilled in as one of two suggestions for George Lomax and ‘Sullivan' for Superintendent Battle. Neither of these were still under contract to the Embassy repertory company by the time the play went into production – Donald Wolfit was by then touring Canada with Barry Jackson's company. ‘Boxer' (John Boxer) is pencilled in as Bill Eversleigh and Agatha's favourite, ‘Joyce' (Joyce Bland), as feisty heroine Virginia Revel, and it is fairly safe to assume that these two were cast in these roles when
Chimneys
finally
went into rehearsal, particularly as they were both appearing in the Embassy's previous production,
Britannia of Billingsgate
– Bland in a small role no doubt in order to allow her to prepare for her leading role in
Chimneys
. A note next to the role of Anthony Cade says ‘Oliver' or perhaps ‘Clive'. I don't know who this is, but I'm sorry to disappoint those who believe that ‘Olivier' may have been been considered for the production.

Writing to Max from a bug-infested train on her journey back from Nineveh in early December, Agatha, having just seen the 19 November copy of
The Times
, probably in a hotel lobby, laments:

Darling – I am horribly disappointed, Just seen in the Times that Chimneys began December 1st, so I shall
just
miss it. I did want to hear how this child of mine sounded on the stage. I
could
have gone on the Saturday convoy because my passport came back in time and then I'd have got home on the Friday and could have seen the last night Saturday. What I ought to have done was wired to Carlo . . . 8th or 1st? I've been getting out of my good telegraphy habits lately – with bad results! If
she
had had any sense she would have wired the date to
me
!
³⁵

Agatha had commenced her journey too late to return by Saturday 12 December, which would have been the last night of a run commencing on 1 December. In reality, under a two-weekly repertory system, with
Britannia of Billingsgate
having opened on 10 November and announcing in its programme, ‘Change of programme every fortnight' and ‘production in preparation: Chimneys, a new play by Agatha Christie',
³⁶
the scheduled opening date for
Chimneys
would originally have been Tuesday 24 November (the date for which it was licensed by the Lord Chamberlain's office). But in the event the unexpected success of
Britannia
, a new comedy by Jope Slade and Sewell Stokes about a charwoman at a film studio who ‘walks on' in a film and is such a hit that she later becomes a famous character actress, meant that it had been extended for a week
at the Embassy and was thought worth transferring to the St Martin's thereafter.
Chimneys
was therefore pushed to 1 December by the extended run at the Embassy, rather than being brought forward as Agatha seemed to believe it had been. It could only ever have opened on 8 December if there was another production scheduled between
Britannia
and it, which clearly there wasn't.

Agatha arrived in Istanbul in mid-December, writing to Max, ‘Am now at Tokatlian [hotel] . . . looked at Times of Dec 7th and “Mary Broome” is on at the Embassy!! So perhaps I shall see Chimneys after all? Or did it go off after a week? All bookshops etc are closed of course – so can't get any other papers.'
³⁷

Mary Broome
, featuring Robert Donat and Joyce Bland, had indeed followed
Britannia of Billingsgate
into the Embassy on 1 December instead of
Chimneys
. With the transfer of
Britannia
to the St Martin's went, presumably, the majority of the cast who would have been in rehearsal for
Chimneys
. The ‘extension' of
Britannia
at the Embassy for a week would have helped to buy some time in respect of organising a new cast for
Chimneys
and was announced on the same day as the news that
Chimneys
was to follow it into the Embassy, so the original intention still seems to have been to make
Chimneys
work. But at some point it must have been decided that the logistics of re-casting
Chimneys
to open by 1 December were simply too daunting. Christie's play is a relatively complex piece of theatre and not without its challenges;
Mary Broome
, on the other hand, was a twenty-year-old comedy by Allan Monkhouse which had become a firm favourite with repertory companies. Only two cast members of
Britannia of Billingsgate
did not transfer with the production, one of them being Joyce Bland, whose small role allowed her to be replaced and to take up the lead in
Mary Broome
rather than
Chimneys
. John Boxer was amongst those who departed with
Britannia
. Had Robert Donat, who was not in the cast of
Britannia
, perhaps been in rehearsal for
Chimneys
when the switch was made? The programme for
Mary Broome
states: ‘Production in preparation: to be announced later (see Daily Press)',
³⁸
indicating the disarray
into which the Embassy's scheduling had been thrown by the sudden departure to the West End of a number of the resident ensemble. With the transfer of
Black Coffee
, this had of course been avoided by taking a break in which to recast the production.

This piece of opportunism on the part of Reandco paid off for them, and
Britannia of Billingsgate
enjoyed a successful West End run, moving on from its launching pad of the St Martin's to the Duke of York's in much the same way that
Black Coffee
had moved on to the Little. The fact that they had produced
Britannia
in the West End would doubtless also have secured Reandco a share of the proceeds when it was filmed two years later, just as their brief West End presentation of
Black Coffee
had cut them in on 50 per cent of Christie's income from the 1931 film of her play. The reason for the rescheduling given to Agatha on her return was rather different, however. On 23 December 1931 she wrote to Max, ‘Chimneys is coming on here but nobody will say when – I fancy they want something in Act One altered and didn't wish to do it themselves' She also mentions that ‘Alibi
may
come on in New York with Charles Laughton.'
³⁹

Chimneys
was eventually rescheduled to commence at the Embassy on either 23 February or 1 March 1932. On 31 December 1931 Agatha wrote to Max from the Torquay Medical Baths, ‘I'm going to have a sea water bath (HOT!) to buck me up after Christmas . . . If Chimneys is put on on Tuesday 23rd I shall stay for first night. If it's a week later well I shan't wait for it. I don't want to miss Nineveh and shall have seen rehearsals, I suppose. By the way, Alibi
is
being put on in New York after being rewritten and “Americanised” by someone. Charles Laughton to be Poirot.'
⁴⁰

What Agatha didn't realise was that Reandco were about to relinquish their lease on the Embassy. Business had not lived up to expectations and the commitment to repertory, with fortnightly productions and a permanent ensemble, whilst highly regarded in theatrical circles, was putting the company under financial pressure. Ticket prices had been lowered in
the hope of attracting more customers, but the struggle proved an unequal one and Rea, ever the pragmatist, decided to cut his losses, terminating his arrangement with the venue at the end of February 1931, just prior to the rescheduled dates for
Chimneys
. There can be no doubt that for Rea, balancing the demands of a full-time repertory company with those of a West End theatre (the St Martin's) and a portfolio of commercial productions was proving unfeasible.