Curtain Up (30 page)

quite a good example of sophisticated melodrama, with an unusual setting and an unusual if insufficiently explained central theme . . . It was good to welcome back Mary Clare to the West End stage. All regular playgoers have vivid memo
ries of her performances in earlier thrillers and here she dominates the play as effectively as Mrs Boynton dominates her step-children. The effectiveness of the performance . . . is the more remarkable because for long periods Miss Clare has only to sit silent and motionless while creating an impression of fear and terror. Terence De Marney has put plenty of vitality into his production and the Harkers' scenery well meets the needs of the situation.
³⁵

Thirty-four West End theatres were offering alternative attractions on the night
Appointment with Death
opened. Noël Coward was enjoying success with both a revival of
Private Lives
at the Apollo and the long-running
Blithe Spirit
at the Duchess; Terence Rattigan, similarly, had both
While the Sun Shines
at the Globe and
Love in Idleness
at the Lyric; the Old Vic Company, headed by Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson and Sybil Thorndike, were presenting
Richard III
at the New Theatre; and Lesley Storm and Esther McCracken were amongst the female playwrights whose work could be seen in the West End. At the Ambassadors the second instalment of the popular revue show
Sweet and Low
was in full swing.

Christie's first wartime offering in the West End had found favour with the contemporary zeitgeist, but her second seemed oddly out of kilter with it, and closed after forty-two performances on 5 May 1945, five days after Hitler's suicide and three days before the end of the war in Europe. It is understandable that the public were glued to their radios during these momentous events, rather than enjoying a night at the theatre puzzling over whodunit with a group of eccentric Brits at Petra. The lack of involvement from the People's Entertainment Society also meant that, unlike
Ten Little Niggers
, the production had not benefited from the co-operative movement's considerable nationwide publicity machine. It seems unlikely that they turned the play down, after their previous success with a Christie title, and they were to work with Meyer on another Christie project in the future; it may simply have been that on
this occasion Meyer did not wish to dilute the distribution of the anticipated profits beyond himself and de Marney. Although Samuel French entered into their usual deal for amateur and publication rights in 1947, they did not publish the play until 1956. With its extravagantly large dramatis personae, it has had no significant revival and is notable for its absence from Hughes Massie's regular advertisements promoting Christie's work to the repertory market throughout the late 1940s and 1950s.

Shortly after the opening of
Appointment with Death
at the Piccadilly, the long-awaited pre-West End tour of
Hidden Horizon
finally began, over a year after the play's try-out production in Dundee. In the intervening period, Sullivan had sold his company's rights in the project to Alec Rea
³⁶
whose company Reandco had transferred Sullivan from the Embassy to the West End in
Black Coffee
in 1931. Along with his business partner E.P. Clift, Rea now become the producer of the project, and Sullivan himself remained in the role that had been written for him. On this occasion, Reandco co-produced in association with seasoned tour booker and promoter Barry O'Brien, who had produced a post-West End tour of
Peril at End House
starring Sullivan, and who was presumably responsible for booking the theatres for
Hidden Horizon
. In mid-February Agatha wrote to Max, ‘Hidden Horizon is going into rehearsal March 12th and has first production at Wimbledon on April 9th. Then Birmingham and then Cardiff 23rd. By which time you might be home and we would have a visit to Ros combined with seeing Larry Sullivan in his dog collar as Canon Pennefather!'
³⁷

The response at Wimbledon, where
Ten Little Niggers
had also opened, was encouraging. Under the headline ‘Wimbledon premiere',
The Stage
announced, ‘On Monday last at Wimbledon, Alec Rea and E.P. Clift presented a new play by Agatha Christie entitled
Hidden Horizon
. Any play by Agatha Christie is bound to attract attention and
Hidden Horizon
is no exception.'
³⁸
The fact that the play had actually premiered in Dundee the previous
year is conveniently overlooked. The review went on, ‘There are numerous “situations”, plots, clues, with plenty of excitement and thrills. It is a cleverly worked-out play . . . The cast is a strong one. Francis L. Sullivan as Canon Pennefather . . . gives a fine rendering of the character of a middle-aged clergyman.'

By June, though, Cork was writing to Agatha with disappointing news:

I'm afraid I have not any good news for you about Hidden Horizon. Business was not very good either in Hammersmith or in Glasgow, and although at the latter place there was a very strong counter-attraction and [director Claud] Gurney says Appointment With Death left a prejudice against Christie plays, I do find it rather disappointing. But the disturbing thing is that the short tour ends this week . . . and Clift tells me that he is quite unable to get a suitable London theatre. His suggestion was that you should be asked whether you would be prepared to grant a further extension of the option under which Clift has to put it on in London by July 12th . . . I think I know the answer to this without asking you. He then asked how we would view the possibility of putting it on at the Westminster Theatre – he has not the offer of it but he thinks he might be able to arrange it. My view is that the Westminster is quite unsuitable for this play, and I would be prepared to argue that the Westminster is not a ‘first class West End Theatre' as required by the contract. Do you think it is? . . . Probably from a hard business point of view it might be better for you for the present contract to run out, which would mean that the projected American production would come on first under a contract granted from you as provided by the last lot of papers that you signed. If it were successful in America, we would be in a very strong position to deal with an English manager. But – and I am afraid this letter seems to be all buts and dashes – I am afraid your friend Sullivan may feel rather badly about it.
³⁹

The end of the war in Europe had caused a momentary hiatus in the West End that contributed to the demise of
Appointment with Death
, but ultimately created an unprecedented boom in theatre attendance, as a celebratory mood prevailed and the long process of demobbing commenced, swelling the number of potential attendees. In August Cork wrote to Agatha again:

I have not written to you about Hidden Horizon because, despite everyone's protestations, there have not been any developments. I have just spoken to Clift again, and he tells me that though he is doing his damdest there is no progress to report. Such business as is being done today has never been known among London theatres, and there is not a single show that need come off . . .

I realise how unsatisfactory you must find all this, but I doubt if any other management could have done better – certainly the Tennents seem to have a lot of shows on, but they have many more plays that they have bought and cannot find theatres for. I suggest that we do not grant an extension to Sullivan and Clift in case another opportunity presents itself, but allow them to carry on with their efforts (which they will do as they have the production and every confidence in it) on the understanding that their position will be regularised if they can produce an acceptable proposition within a reasonable time.
⁴⁰

The possible American production of
Hidden Horizon
that Cork refers to in his earlier letter was being planned by the Shuberts under an option that they eventually obtained from Reandco at the beginning of August 1945.
⁴¹
The UK producer would not normally have been entitled to sell the US rights in advance of opening in the West End, but Hughes Massie had given them a special dispensation to do so in order to facilitate the sale without the Shuberts having to wait for Reandco to present the play in London. Presumably sensing that there were problems with their commissioned
Towards Zero
script,
and eager to have a follow-up ready for
Ten Little Indians
(which had finally closed on Broadway the previous month), the Shuberts seem to have taken on
Hidden Horizon
as a fall-back position.
Ten Little Indians
' Albert de Courville was lined up to direct and again named as a co-licensee and entitled to 25 per cent of profits, indicating that he was regarded once more as a key player in securing the title for them from Hughes Massie (via Ober in New York). Significantly, the Shuberts at no point showed any interest in
Appointment with Death
, even though its American option was in the gift of Bertie Meyer, with whom they had struck the deal for
Ten Little Indians
.

Towards Zero
, though, would have had greater currency as a title in America at the time than a retitled
Death on the Nile
, and the Shuberts did their best to safeguard their investment and make it work. On the day that they had issued their commissioning contract to Christie for
Towards Zero
, their lawyer Adolph Kaufman had spoken with Ivan von Auw of the Ober office about adding a clause that would enable them to make changes for the script in the event that it was ‘not fit for American theatre'. But, he reported to Lee Shubert at the time, ‘Mr Van Auw stated that from his past experience with Miss Christie, she has always been very co-operative with publishers in the matter of changes and he sees no reason why she would not co-operate in this case. He thinks this question should be left to the future because, very likely, you will not need many changes in any event.'
⁴²

Changes were duly requested, and in January 1945, Cork wrote to Christie, ‘I hear from Harold Ober that Lee Shubert is enthusiastic about your play Towards Zero, but he is suggesting certain slight alterations in the last act, which have been posted to us by airmail. I should think these are just “producer's alterations” which I believe you anticipated.'
⁴³

It seems though that, in the event, Christie was too busy to undertake any changes and, following exchanges with Hughes Massie in March, an American writer, Robert Harris, had eventually been engaged to carry out some script doctoring. On
5 June 1945 the Shuberts signed an agreement to pay Harris $1,000 ‘to edit and re-write for us any or all parts of the play now known as Towards Zero as shall be designated by the undersigned'.
⁴⁴
Harris was to waive all his rights and would not receive a credit on the play. According to a memo from Kaufman to Lee Shubert on 30 June, ‘The work performed by Harris becomes the property of Select [one of the Shuberts' companies] and he has no claim of ownership or title to the work.' It added that he ‘has already delivered the rewritten work and been paid in full'.
⁴⁵

I was first set on the trail of the
Towards Zero
script by a letter from Lee Shubert to Christie (care of Hughes Massie) dated 18 October 1945. It reads,

Dear Miss Christie,

We ‘tried out' the above play this summer and regret to say unsuccessfully. The trouble, as Mr de Courville pointed out, lies in the last act, and, even though we went to considerable expense in an effort to correct the act, we found the climax came too suddenly and the final situation was not plausible to the audience.

We therefore decided to postpone the New York production of the play until you yourself had an opportunity to put things right. It would, in our opinion, be unwise to produce a successor to the very popular Ten Little Indians unless we felt we had an opportunity of topping, or at least equalling the success of your other play. It would not only be bad for us, but also for the name of Agatha Christie, which we wish to keep very high on Broadway . . .

Would you be good enough to undertake the work on the play yourself for, after all, we know of no one else competent enough to do it. You know, of course, the difference in the returns between a mediocre play and a good one and we hope you will agree to make the necessary alterations and give us the necessary time for producing same.

With kind regards I am sincerely yours,

Lee Shubert
⁴⁶

For Shubert himself to write to Christie in this way is indicative of the perceived value of her work to his company, but the most significant point here is that he is clearly discussing a work that, by October 1945,
has already been performed
in America in a ‘try-out' production, albeit not in New York. Within hours of phoning the Shubert archive I was advised that they held copies not only of the original commissioning agreement, but also of the script. Having cast myself in the role of detective in this particular story, I felt that it was essential that I see the evidence first hand as I had with the scripts for
The Lie
,
The Stranger
and others. This was much more than a missing Christie play; it was a missing play that had actually been performed, the only play that she wrote as a result of a commission, and the only work of hers to receive its world premiere in America in her lifetime. The Shubert archive, as it happens, held three copies of this unique and previously unknown script, one of which has now kindly been donated by the Shubert Organisation to the Agatha Christie archive.

Like the novel, Christie's play is set at Lady Tressilian's house on the coast. It follows the same plot concerning a man who flaunts his new wife in front of his previous one; and a murder, the perpetrator of which comes close to successfully framing another suspect, and has constructed the whole scenario in the hope of disposing of the wrongly accused individual via the hangman's noose (hence the original magazine serialisation title,
Come and Be Hanged!
). It is a neat plot with a surprise outcome, but it is no
Ten Little Niggers
in terms of construction and consequent dramatic potential. Instead, as is often the case with Christie's stage work, she takes the opportunity to focus on characterisation and motivation, which is of particular interest to her in a story the premise of which is to explore how, through people's interactions, the ‘zero hour' of murder is actually arrived at.