Curtain Up (55 page)

The plot of
Spider's Web
deliberately includes a number of devices that would have been familiar to readers of Christie's stories, and involves an element of conscious self-parody of her work and of the detective thriller genre. The ‘country house' setting is, once again a red herring; as in
The Mousetrap
, the house's inhabitants are by no means landed gentry, and in this case are renting the property, which comes complete with a priest's hole concealed behind a bookcase, allowing Clarissa the delightful curtain line ‘Exit Clarissa mysteriously.' The whole thing rattles along at a fair old pace, greatly assisted by the fact that it is performed in real time over the course of one evening, leading Clarissa to conclude, ‘How extraordinary it is; all my life nothing has really happened to me and tonight I've had the lot. Murder, police, drug addicts, invisible ink, secret writing, almost arrested for manslaughter and very nearly murdered. You know, in a way it's almost too much all in one evening.' A delightfully wry comment from Christie on the genre in which she wrote. Clarissa's husband, of course, doesn't believe her, and asks her to put the kettle on.

The Spider's Web
was a title that Christie had wanted to use for the 1943 UK release of her novel
The Moving Finger
, originally published in America the previous year. Collins, however, had advised Edmund Cork that there had recently been another book of that title and that they were ‘rather doubtful' about Christie's suggested alternative, ‘The Tangled Web'.
¹⁵
In the end, Collins had stuck with the title used by Dodd, Mead & Co. for the book's American debut, but now Christie saw an opportunity to experiment with the ‘Spider's Web' idea again; from the evidence of draft scripts, she was clearly torn between this and ‘Clarissa Finds a Body' for the title of her new play.

Christie went diligently about her task, missing rehearsals for
Witness for the Prosecution
and making twenty pages of preparatory notes (in Notebook 12) for what was to be the first entirely original stage play of hers to be performed since
Black Coffee
, all of the others having been adaptations (although often quite radical ones) of either novels or short stories.
Spider's Web
was not technically a commission, but Christie entirely fulfilled her brief, creating a delightful star vehicle for Lockwood that would show off her talents to great effect in a comedy role and help her to dispel her cinematic ‘wicked lady' image. Lockwood was thrilled: ‘Before I'd finished reading the first act I knew the part of Clarissa Hailsham-Brown was “me”. I loved it. It was light, saucy, endearing, packed with good lines and, above all, funny.'
¹⁶
Christie had written the role of Pippa, Clarissa's young stepdaughter, for Lockwood's thirteen-year-old daughter Julia (or ‘Toots' as her mother called her), although in the end a filming contract, followed by a Christmas engagement to play Goldilocks at Brentford's Q Theatre, prevented her from taking part. The role of Sir Rowland Delahaye was created, at Lockwood's request, for another of de Leon's clients, Wilfrid Hyde White; but he turned it down and the part was taken by Felix Aylmer. Oxford-educated Aylmer had learned his craft with Barry Jackson's Birmingham Rep, and then as part of the regular ReandeaN company at the St Martin's Theatre, before going on to make notable appearances in Olivier's films of
Henry V
and
Hamlet
and, in 1950, becoming
president of the actors' union, Equity. Saunders gave him second billing to Lockwood, who can be been seen smothering Aylmer to death in her signature role as the Wicked Lady. A first-rate cast also included the young Desmond Llewelyn (later to be James Bond's ‘Q') in the role of Constable Jones, alongside Campbell Singer as Inspector Lord. Singer had the distinction of having played the role of Blore in the first full-length Christie play script to be televised, 1949's BBC broadcast of
Ten Little Niggers
.

Securing Lockwood as his star was a major coup for Saunders, and he made the most of it, booking an unusually long eleven-week pre-London tour which commenced on 27 September and opened, as usual, in Nottingham. As with the promotion of Attenborough and Sim for
The Mousetrap
, the poster design for
Spider's Web
consisted largely of a picture of Lockwood, and her name appeared on the publicity and programme in considerably larger type than Christie's; Saunders' oft-repeated mantra that he ‘made Christie the star' only held good so long as there was nobody else to step into the shoes.

The production was directed by Wallace Douglas, who had made such a success of
Witness for the Prosecution
– just for once, Hubert Gregg does not claim that the job was offered to him first. Douglas's star was in the ascendant, and on 2 September 1954
The Stage
reported, ‘With the opening of
Dry Rot
at the Whitehall this week, Wallace Douglas has directed three plays now running in the West End, the others being
Witness for the Prosecution
at the Winter Garden and
The Manor at Northstead
at the Duchess. He is now working on
Spider's Web
, the play that is to bring Margaret Lockwood back to London.' It was indeed fortuitous that Douglas embarked on Christie's comedy immediately after opening John Chapman's
Dry Rot
, which was destined to become one of the longest-running and most successful of the farces presented by Brian Rix at the Whitehall Theatre during the 1950s and 60s. His experience at the helm of the Whitehall farce team must have proved invaluable to him in the staging
of Christie's larky comedy, and with London evidently in the mood for farce the timing could not have been better. Saunders again teamed Douglas with designer Michael Weight, although
Spider's Web
presented fewer design challenges than their previous collaboration on
Witness for the Prosecution
.

Douglas and Christie clearly got on well although, like Gregg, she does not mention him in her autobiography. Unlike Gregg, Douglas was hugely respectful of the playwright with whose work he was entrusted. The draft script in the Agatha Christie archive opens with Clarissa's house guests, Sir Rowland Delahaye and Hugo Birch, discussing butterflies at great length. In some cases, the names of the butterflies have been left blank in the typescript and filled in later by hand, presumably following consultation with someone who was in a position to advise on the subject; possibly Christie's son-in-law Anthony Hicks, who she remarked in her autobiography ‘could talk knowledgeably on butterflies'.
¹⁷

Delightful though the conceit is of two eccentric fellows engaged in a passionate lepidopteral debate, Wallace Douglas believed that this would not be a dramatically effective opening to the play. Although Christie dug her heels in, she changed her mind after seeing the first performance in Nottingham, and she and Douglas worked in a room at their hotel to create the opening that we now know, involving Delahaye and Birch taking part in a blindfolded port tasting. ‘That is what was so very sweet and generous of her,' remarked Douglas to unofficial Christie biographer Gwen Robyns. ‘Once she was convinced that she was wrong she was never so discourteous as not to admit it.'
¹⁸
This new scenario may also have owed something to Hicks, of whom Christie observed affectionately, ‘If he has a fault, it is that he discusses wine at too great length.'
¹⁹

As is so often the case with the edits Christie made to her plays at the request of directors, the original version is far more interesting as a piece of writing than what we have been left with, although in strictly dramatic terms it would probably be difficult to argue with the decision to cut. Here, then, is the
butterfly conversation – which, it should be noted, includes some wry observations on the male–female dynamic and the scientific and legal professions, all of which are absent from its replacement. It is a ‘wet evening in March':

       
ROWLAND: What I say is, there's a lot of nonsense in these books. Why, I found a Heath Fritillary myself in my own herbaceous border.

       
HUGO: Nothing against that, but the Large Copper is entirely different. Lycaena Dispar has been extinct in this country since 1847. Consult any authority you like, they all say the same.

       
ROWLAND: Doesn't prevent them all being wrong.

       
HUGO: It's highly unlikely that they'd
all
be wrong.

       
ROWLAND: Most likely thing in the world! These scientific fellows are all the same, like a pack of sheep. All repeat what the other feller said. But here we've got a reliable witness. Clarissa's aunt definitely saw –

       
HUGO: Probably saw Polychloros – the Large Tortoiseshell.

       
ROWLAND: Not at all. Clarissa's aunt was a meticulous observer. You didn't know her.

       
HUGO: No – but what I say is, anyone can be mistaken.

       
ROWLAND: Not Clarissa's aunt! Why if Clarissa's aunt was alive now and came to me and said she'd seen a flying saucer – dash it all, I'd believe in flying saucers! . . .

       
HUGO: Now, look here, Rowly, let's go back a bit. Clarissa's aunt wasn't exactly what you'd call a professional entomologist –

       
ROWLAND: Of course she wasn't a professional entomologist. She was a country woman and what she didn't know about birds, butterflies, wild flowers –

       
HUGO: What I'm getting at is that she wasn't an
expert
.

       
ROWLAND: (snorting) Expert! Experts are the curse of this age. Give me an expert and I'll show you a fellow who's pretty certain to be wrong.

       
HUGO: That's a mere generalisation. But let's go back a bit. You admit the story is that Clarissa's aunt was out for a
walk with her brother-in-law and her brother-in-law said ‘My dear there is a Large Copper.' It's not really
her
word you have for it, it's
his
.

       
ROWLAND: I see no reason to disbelieve the story. Her husband's brother was Wainwright. You know, high court judge. Don't tell me that a high court judge would commit himself by saying ‘There's a Large Copper' unless it was a Large Copper. You know how careful these legal wallahs are.

       
HUGO: What I'm getting at is that she didn't know of her own knowledge that it was a Large Copper, she just agreed with what he said because he was a man and sure to know best. Wish we had a little more of that delightful Victorian spirit nowadays.

       
ROWLAND: My point is that two people saw the Large Copper by the Harford River, and they can't both have been mistaken, and you're entirely wrong about Clarissa's aunt. She was a charming woman, but she had plenty of spirit.

       
HUGO: It's a well known fact that the Large Copper only breeds where the great water dock grows.

       
ROWLAND: Heaps of great water dock by the Harford River.

       
HUGO: How do you know, Rowly? You don't know a bee orchid from a stitchwort.

       
ROWLAND: Ah, but I was lunching at the club the other day. There was one of those botanical fellows there, just come back from Dartmoor. Had been looking for a lesser bogwort or something like that. I could swear he mentioned the great water dock. ‘No rarity grows like a weed,' he said. Well, I mean, it
is
a weed of course.

       
ROWLAND: It's common in the Norfolk Broads but I don't believe it grows in the West of England. We'll look it up. (He rises and goes to door of library)

       
HUGO: You'll see. ‘Found in marshy places and near streams.' That's what it will say. Clarissa's aunt knew all about wild flowers.
²⁰

The draft script also shows that the play originally consisted of three acts each of one scene, but that what were originally
the first twenty-seven pages of a rather long Act Three were renumbered and converted into a second scene for Act Two. This change to the early draft, which clearly pre-dates rehearsals and the involvement of a director, gives a better balance to the piece and allows for an excellent curtain line at the new end of Act Two, which has been inserted on an additional page. John Curran identifies preparatory notes for the play which include Act Two action under the heading ‘Act Three', and his surmise that the act structure must have been changed in this way is correct.
²¹
Three sections of additional dialogue (one in Act Two and two in Act Three) appear to have been added at a later stage and have been inserted, along with the new opening, into the copy held in the Lord Chamberlain's plays collection.
²²

One other change was made during the West End run of the play, according to correspondence in the Lord Chamberlain's files. In Act One, in a conversation about autographs, young Pippa says that she wishes she had ‘Neville Duke's and Roger Bannister's. These historical ones are rather mouldy, I think.' In April 1956, in an acknowledgement of the marriage that month of Prince Rainier of Monaco to Grace Kelly, this was changed to ‘I wish I had Grace Kelly's and Prince Rainier's'.
²³
This change was evidently not passed on to Samuel French, who used the original line when they published the script in 1957.

Spider's Web
opened in the West End at the Savoy Theatre, owned by the Savoy Hotel, on 14 December 1954. Once again, Saunders had been forced to find a home outside of ‘the Group', many of whose theatres were contracted to Tennents. There was no orchestra on this occasion, but two pianists entertained the audience with a selection of Gershwin and Porter melodies, and the play featured the specially composed ‘Spider's Web Theme Music'.
²⁴
Saunders celebrated his trio of West End Christies by taking an advertisement for
The Mousetrap
and
Witness for the Prosecution
in the programme for
Spider's Web
. The first night audience's response was less emphatic than it had been for
Witness for the Prosecution
, although the play was undoubtedly a crowd-pleaser.