Curtain Up (67 page)

In Act One of
Go Back for Murder
, Carla arrives from Canada, where she has been living, and enlists the help of solicitor Justin Fogg to organise one-to-one interviews, each in a different location, between herself and the five potential witnesses to her father's murder sixteen years previously. In Act Two, she persuades them to revisit the scene of the crime (the garden room and terrace of a now-deserted country house ‘in the West of England' – complete with French windows, of course) and again recount their versions of events; but this time, as they do so, the action switches seamlessly in and out of the night of the crime, so that we see it acted out as the characters remember it. The actress playing Carla also plays her own mother, Caroline, and Christie gives intriguing notes in the ‘acting edition' on how the other performers should subtly adjust their performances to indicate whether they are in the past or the present. Fogg acts as a sort of master of ceremonies, anchored in the present, and serves Poirot's function of spotting the vital clues as presented in the flashbacks, which we assume he himself is hearing simply as narrative from the five witnesses. The true killer is revealed but, once again, appears to escape justice, as there is no evidence of a sort that would hold up in a court. Carla has achieved her objective of seeing her mother exonerated to her own satisfaction, and the killer, we are told, has already been sentenced; the knowledge of their guilt, and of the miscarriage of justice
inflicted on Caroline, has condemned them to ‘life imprisonment' inside themselves.

Christie has not only successfully dispensed with Poirot but, as in
Hidden Horizon
, has removed the role of the detective completely. She has also brilliantly made use of the highly theatrical device of re-enactment in a manner that suspends the audience's disbelief and engages them simultaneously in the present and the past. The ‘present' of the play is 1959, and the ‘past' is (wartime) 1943 which, in another interesting timewarp, is the ‘present' of the novel's UK publication. We (and the actors) literally do ‘go back' for murder. As a dramatic exercise it is daring but effective. At least, it should be. If it is properly directed. And designed. And acted.

Even Lib Taylor has to admire Christie's use of ‘metatheatrical devices', conceding that she is ‘certainly here raising questions about linearity, and in representing multiplicity she foreshadows the preoccupations of feminist writers'.
³⁷
Unfortunately, however, the solicitor apparently ‘functions uncritically as male author, sustaining the narrative structure and “speaking for” characters, especially females, thereby denying plurality in favour of singularity and resolution. The deconstructive process reinforces rather than dislodges stereotypes, as the perceived villainess now coincides with the “true” murderess, and the mother is restored to her ideologically defined position. Moral justice prevails; the status quo remains undisturbed.' Well, now we know. To satisfy the feminists, the mother would have had to murder her husband; it is a shame that
The Hollow
pre-dates the time frame of Taylor's thesis.

What Taylor has spectacularly failed to appreciate, of course, is that by removing Poirot from the story altogether, Christie has placed Carla right at the centre of the action. Fogg, acting under her direction, has a certain stage management role in Act Two, but in Act One it is Carla rather than Poirot who interviews the suspects. Carla's single-minded determination to discover the truth is the driving force of the piece and, for good measure, she rids herself of a distinctly oppressive fiancé in the process. This gentleman, who goes by the name of Jeff,
has some disturbing and distinctly outdated views on eugenics, which take us right back to Sydney Fairfield's dilemma in Clemence Dane's 1921 play
A Bill of Divorcement
and, indeed, to Christie's own early ‘Eugenia' parody. Here, in conversation with Fogg, he reveals his dismay on discovering that his fiancée's mother was a convicted murderess:

       
JEFF: There I was, all set to marry a nice girl, uncle and aunt some of the nicest people in Montreal, a well-bred girl, money of her own. Everything a man could want. And then – out of the blue –
this
. . . . I'll admit that, just at first, I thought of backing out – you know, kids – things like that?

       
JUSTIN: You have strong views about heredity?

       
JEFF: You can't do any cattle-breeding without realizing that certain strains repeat themselves. ‘Still', I said to myself, ‘it isn't the girl's fault. She's a fine girl. You can't let her down. You've just got to go through with it.'

       
JUSTIN: Cattle breeding.

       
JEFF: So I told her it made no difference at all.
³⁸

Later, in conversation with the brandy-swigging archaeologist Angela Warren, Carla expresses her doubts about Jeff:

       
ANGELA: He minds about this?

       
CARLA: He's very magnanimous.

       
ANGELA: How bloody! I shouldn't marry him.

       
CARLA: I'm not sure that I want to.

       
ANGELA: Another man?

       
CARLA: Must everything be a man?

       
ANGELA: Usually seems to be. I prefer rock paintings.

Just so we are clear about Angela's sexual orientation, we are told that ‘she is a tall woman of thirty, of distinguished appearance, well-dressed in a plain suit with a mannish hat.' As for Carla herself, in Christie's extensive theatrical pantheon of independent, determined female protagonists, she leads the
field: single-mindedly pursuing her own agenda, irrespective of the men around her.

In terms of
Go Back for Murder
's complex moral outcomes, it is worth noting, in passing, that the miscarriage of justice which put Caroline Crale behind bars instead of the real killer was not in this case compounded by the death penalty. We are told specifically that ‘The jury made a strong recommendation to mercy. Her sentence was commuted to imprisonment.' The death sentence for murder was technically mandatory until the 1957 Homicide Act created various exceptions, and there is reference to this in 1958's
The Unexpected Guest
, when Starkwedder states that prison for Laura would be ‘just as bad as being hanged by the neck, or is this the kind of crime you are hanged for? I can never remember.' But even in the early 1940s the jury's recommendation, provided the judge and the Home Secretary were of the same mind, could have resulted in a reprieve. Whilst the existence of the death penalty substantially raises the stakes in many a Christie drama, and specifically for the wrongfully accused women in
Towards Zero
and
Verdict
, 40 per cent of men and 90 per cent of women sentenced to the death penalty in the UK in the first half of the twentieth century were actually reprieved in this way.
³⁹
Christie is thus not, as some have suggested, deliberately avoiding the issue of a misapplied death penalty, and thereby missing an opportunity to fuel the increasingly virulent opposition to it in the wake of the 1955 hanging of Ruth Ellis, but is simply realistically reflecting the most likely outcome. The play's narrative and psychological concerns are in any case not driven by the same agendas as
Come and Be Hanged!
, and if they were then the real killer could certainly not be allowed to walk free at the end. The death penalty for murder was finally suspended in 1965, when Labour MP Sydney Silverman, the man who had supported Binkie Beaumont in Parliament, introduced a Private Member's Bill of his own. It was abolished completely five years later.

As well as
The Unexpected Guest
's restoration of her reputation as a playwright, the last years of the decade had
brought with them the end of several significant chapters in Agatha's life. In 1958, following the death of Nancy Neele, she and Archie had exchanged some conciliatory correspondence; perhaps at last this had allowed her to achieve some closure on the distressing incidents of over thirty years before. In the same year, James Watts, Madge's widower, finally sold the cherished family home Abney Hall, the inspiration for many a Christie setting, most notably
Chimneys
. And in December 1959, just as Agatha was completing the script for
Go Back for Murder
, her close friend Nan Kon, James's sister, died.

There were changes, too, in Max's life, as he handed over the directorship of the Nimrud excavations in Iraq to a colleague. The British School of Archaeology was to continue its work at Nimrud after 1958's coup, which had overthrown the monarchy and established a republic in Iraq, but in early 1960 Agatha and Max chose to travel instead to India and Pakistan.

In January, Cork wrote to Agatha in Bombay, ‘Peter seems to be very happy about the new play, plans for which have gone ahead along the lines discussed with you before you left, except that the actor who was to play the lawyer has got caught up with some film commitment and has had to be replaced with Robert Urquhart, who Peter seems to think will give quite as good a performance.'
⁴⁰
Tantalisingly, I can find no clues as to who was originally to have played the role, but thirty-seven-year-old Scottish actor Urquhart, a respected stage and film performer, should have been a safe pair of hands. Hubert Gregg, now it seems automatically entrusted by Saunders with the direction of Christie plays, praises Urquhart's contribution to the production in his book, although I suspect he may have been Gregg's own suggestion as a replacement, having played the lead in his thriller
Speaking of Murder
(‘the best thriller in town').

When
Go Back for Murder
started its short pre-West End tour at the King's Theatre Edinburgh on 22 February,
The Stage
's regional critic seemed to appreciate it. Under the headline
‘Ingenious new thriller by Agatha Christie' the review went on to call it ‘an ingenious whodunit, making use of an unusual technique, calling for intricate staging and lighting. The characters, as one expects from Agatha Christie, are well differentiated, and we are kept guessing . . . we see the tragedy reconstructed, in memory, with Carla's lawyer as onlooker, ready to spot the vital clue.'
⁴¹

On 23 March, when the play opened in London, the West End was offering its usual lively mix of thrillers, comedies, new plays, musicals and revues. At Drury Lane
My Fair Lady
had been recast and had finally seen off
Salad Days
and
The Boy Friend
, but was facing competition from
West Side Story
– ‘a musical with full New York Cast' – and the transfer of the Theatre Royal Stratford East's
Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be
. Margaret Lockwood was appearing for Peter Saunders in the comedy
And Suddenly It's Spring
at the Duke of York's, and the Royal Court was presenting the transfer from Hampstead Theatre Club of the Harold Pinter double-bill
The Dumb Waiter
and
The Room
.
Go Back for Murder
had itself displaced Michael Gilbert's ingenious thriller
A Clean Kill
, directed by Alistair Sim and advertised as the ‘Best Crime Play Since Dial M for Murder', which had taken up temporary residence at the Duchess (between Christies) en route to its final home at the Westminster Theatre.

By 1960 the problem of regular outbreaks of booing at West End first nights had ended as unaccountably as it had started; which, in the case of
Go Back for Murder
, was probably fortunate. Once again, Christie had comprehensively subverted expectations, but on this occasion Saunders' production itself seems to have fallen uncharacteristically short of the mark. Kenneth Tynan, who had previously expressed some appreciation, albeit ironically, of Christie's idiosyncratic work for the stage, was taking a sabbatical from the
Observer
to work at the
New Yorker
. His replacement's brief review said, ‘
Go Back for Murder
is another example of unexpected collapse, due to inept handling, of a very moderate idea . . . The whole matter is gone through at a snail's pace and in the teeth of every
possible obstacle put in the way of the actors by Michael Weight's décor.'
⁴²
In its ‘theatre round-up', the
Observer
commented, ‘Careless work; Agatha can do much better when she tries.'

The
Guardian
felt that

This is low octane Agatha Christie, mousetrap cheese which only the very hungry will find palatable. It is roughly produced and contains some of the cheapest acting to have been seen on the London stage for many a day. As it may well run for seven years, it would honour the theatre if the producer [i.e. director] and players, with the honourable exception of Margot Boyd in a small part as a huffy governess, would try to establish a workable tempo and passably naturalistic style . . . it might be worse; is not devoid of ingenuity; but is, all the same, a sorry job for the author of
Witness for the Prosecution
.
⁴³

As had been the case with
Verdict
,
The Stage
's London critic was sterner than his regional counterpart. Under the headline ‘Mrs Christie! It's not as easy as it seems', the review ran:

Agatha Christie has hardly accomplished a neat, convincing piece of stagecraft in
Go Back For Murder
, which opened at the Duchess last week. In fact, it is an adaptation of one of her novels, and bears all the signs of a clumsy, inexpert, attempt to bring that totally different medium to life in a theatre. On paper the characters were conventional puppets given a superficial appearance of reality and manipulation with some plausibility purely in the service of puzzlement and plot. But it is not so simple as was evidently thought to write them down in a play-script and expect a group of living actors and actresses to make them compelling to an audience.
⁴⁴