Curtain Up (68 page)

Under the ominous headline ‘Miss Christie varies the routine',
The Times
remarked:

Audiences show no obvious signs of growing tired of watching suspects in a case of murder rounded up and put through the hoop, one by one or in selected groups, by a dogged policeman. But Miss Agatha Christie evidently thinks it time they had a change. She tries to vary the routine without altering its fundamental pattern.
Go Back for Murder
at the Duchess puts the murder some sixteen years back in time and dispenses with the policeman . . . it must be said, however, that Miss Christie has often got more excitement from the routine police investigation than she manages to get from this variation on the routine. She requires in this instance a great many brief scenes which only with difficulty sustain the story's momentum; her dialogue is so strictly utilitarian that it hardly pretends to have the colour of life . . . Miss Ann Firbank is a vigorous heroine . . . the acting as a whole is as utilitarian as the dialogue.
⁴⁵

Of course, the very idea that ‘Miss Christie' was daring to alter the ‘routine' in any way and was unleashing another of her theatrical experiments on her unsuspecting public was enough to send the box office into rapid decline, and the production closed after an inglorious thirty-seven performances. History seems to have overlooked the fact that
Go Back for Murder
was actually a much bigger disaster than
Verdict
. It played one more performance (thirty-seven to
Verdict
's thirty-six) but the multiple sets, in themselves costing over £2,000, had contributed to it being the most expensive Christie production staged to date, at £5,821. Although Peter Saunders waived some legitimate recharges from his own companies for props and set items, running accounts show substantial weekly losses in addition to the loss of the entire up-front expenditure.
⁴⁶

There was, of course, some additional income to help offset these losses; the pre-London tour had only been four weeks long but the usual licensed tour took place immediately after the West End run and, despite the staging difficulties, there was a level of repertory uptake. When the books closed and
Saunders wrote to investors with final accounts, it was to say, ‘I am sorry your investment shows a loss, but I hope you will feel that, for a six set show to run for four and a half weeks in London and to lose just under £3,000 is quite a feat!'
⁴⁷
Verdict
, it will be remembered, had lost only £20 for the same length of run; but its costs had been lower and its repertory uptake higher.

The London premiere of
Go Back for Murder
had coincided with the press announcement that Christie herself had secured a million-pound deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for the screen rights to her work.
⁴⁸
Hubert Gregg and Peter Saunders held the news responsible for a critical backlash; they both quote the
Daily Mail
's new critic, Robert Muller, who remarked, ‘I don't care how rich Miss Christie is. This stinks.'
⁴⁹
Saunders and Gregg, though, must themselves take at least some of the responsibility for the production's failure. Saunders, happily, had married actress Ann Stewart the previous year, and in the autumn, as Christie finished her script, was focused on furnishing their impressive new home on exclusive Bishop's Avenue in Hampstead. Gregg, flushed with the success of both
The Hollow
and
The Unexpected Guest
, was confident in his belief that Christie and he seemed to be becoming a ‘theatrical sure bet' – although not, it should be noted, as sure a bet as Christie and Wallace Douglas.

What neither Saunders nor Gregg appear to have appreciated is the complexity of the piece that Christie had presented them with. Michael Weight, as ever, came up with ingenious design solutions, not only for the first act's five different locations, but also for Act Two, with its stage split between the garden room and terrace. The fact was, however, that the theatre was far too small successfully to accommodate the concept of the production; according to Gregg, ‘The wee Duchess Theatre was surprised out of its scene dock'.

With the exception of the honourable mentions for Margot Boyd and Ann Firbank, the performers mostly came in for as much criticism as the cramped design, and there seems to have been no attempt at all to cast the piece with star actors,
even pretend ones. When the
Guardian
's critic accused the performers of ‘cheap' acting he wasn't far wrong. The payroll is notably lacking in star salaries,
⁵⁰
although a number of the ten-strong cast enjoyed modest television and film profiles; in Lisa Daniely's case in the title role of the 1950s Lilli Marlene films. Cast as Amyas Crale's mistress Elsa, Daniely was represented by Herbert de Leon – who again, wisely, did not invest. Whereas
The Unexpected Guest
, despite its lack of major stars, at least appears to have benefited from a cast who were committed to doing justice to the play, the same, sadly, does not appear to have been the case with
Go Back for Murder
.

Arguably, the actors may simply have been the victims of the fact that Hubert Gregg himself was clearly well out of his comfort zone. He refers to
Go Back for Murder
as a ‘problem piece' and appears to have been genuinely nonplussed by the whole thing. Even the lighting seems to have been beyond his capabilities on this occasion.
The Stage'
s Edinburgh critic had noted that the play called for ‘intricate' lighting, and this was eventually provided when Saunders drafted in Michael Northen to undertake a redesign. So successful was the outcome that Northen, a leading pioneer in the field and the first person to be credited as a lighting designer in the UK, went on to light Saunders' productions on a regular basis, including a complete relight of
The Mousetrap
the following year. Gregg, who prided himself on his lighting abilities, does not mention Northen's involvement in his book, but in his own book Northen says that when he was invited to watch the production, ‘I agreed, as tactfully as I could, that the lighting could certainly be improved.'
⁵¹

Unusually for Gregg, he lays claim to the authorship of only three lines in the play, in this case some innocuous banter about the lack of heating in Fogg's office, and his overall verdict on the script is that ‘It wasn't bad. It was different, very different, but it wasn't bad. I suppose it might have been better as a novel.'
⁵²
He takes Christie to task for having adapted a book rather than coming up with a new idea, and goes on to state, with typical arrogance, that he didn't bother to read
Five Little Pigs
. ‘I had no intention of reading the book . . . I hadn't with
The Hollow
. With Christie I wore theatrical blinkers, it was the only way.' Perhaps in this case Gregg should have done so; he would then maybe have appreciated and properly understood the new idea that she had in fact come up with. As indeed might have Lib Taylor, had she read the novel.

One issue that Gregg does raise is the apparent lack of drama in the play's denouement. The real killer is identified by Fogg, and is singled out by him in front of a room full of people halfway through a long speech explaining how he has arrived at his conclusion. But the moment where the killer is identified can appear to be slightly ill-defined, relying on eye contact between accuser and accused at the point when the revelation is made. There is no violent reaction to the accusation. The accused listens impassively before remarking, ‘He deserved to die,' adding, quite correctly, ‘You're a clever man, Mr Fogg. But there isn't a damn thing you can do about it,' and then exiting. There is further dialogue amongst the characters left on stage but no final twist. Again, in the right hands this play should not require one; what has gone before should be sufficiently remarkable.

Gregg's papers, like the Christie archive and indeed the Christie notebooks, give us very few clues about the genesis of
Go Back for Murder
; and a fire at Peter Saunders' office in 1960 may account for the paucity of correspondence regarding this and other later Christie plays (although contractual and accounting material has been preserved). In Gregg's papers there is, however, one letter about the play from Christie, who wrote to him three weeks after the opening to commiserate over the reviews: ‘Yes we've
all
copped it this time – even the music of Ravel did not escape. It's a bit disheartening, I must say – still plays are like racehorses, always either amazing or disappointing their stables.'
⁵³
She goes on to comment that Gregg's wife looked extremely glamorous and ‘could have done a much better job of being “irresistible” than our Elsa [Lisa Daniely]', and that ‘I still feel I can do better over that ending.
The space is so cramped that one feels Justin is picking someone by means of the pin trick.'

Christie goes on to point out in some detail that, as the accused had their back to the audience at the key moment, the audience saw no sign of a response to Fogg's accusation. ‘You feel rather doubtful' whether Fogg actually meant that person or whether they even heard him. She concludes that it would of course be different if the performer playing the accused ‘could
act
– but when they can't they can't and it wouldn't have made any difference to the critics anyway!!' Magnanimous as ever, it had nonetheless clearly not been lost on her that the production had been badly let down by the direction and some of the acting, as well as by attempting to squeeze the design into such a small space. It is interesting to note that, Christie had not been present for rehearsals of either
Verdict
or
Go Back for Murder
. It is all too easy to underestimate her own lively contribution to the rehearsal process.

Gregg quotes an unnamed critic in support of his thesis that Christie herself had botched the ending: ‘Agatha Clarissa Christie seems to have lost her corkscrew . . . the one she used with such effect to give those typical twist endings to her most successful mystery plays. This latest . . . is short of this one ingredient. Miss Christie has produced some 60 such crime pieces in book or play form varying on this basic formula. Here one wonders whether or not the variation imposes too much on director Hubert Gregg and his assistants.'
⁵⁴
The fact was that it clearly had; but in that case I would regard the fault as lying with the director rather than the playwright. Or, indeed, with the producer who appointed the director. J.B. Priestley's seminal ‘time play',
Time and the Conways
, had received its West End premiere at the Duchess Theatre in 1937; it was directed by Irene Hentschel. One can't help but wonder how much better Christie's own ‘time play' might have fared had it been entrusted to her favourite director.

The nationwide appetite for Christie's plays was undiminished by a second West End flop in three years, however; and, once
again, the Hughes Massie sales ledgers bear witness to the enormous ongoing popularity of her work in regional theatres, with as many as half a dozen simultaneous repertory productions of a single title in the 1950s and 60s. In August 1961,
The Stage
reported on the Llandudno summer season:

Now firmly established as one of the resort's major attractions is the season of Agatha Christie thrillers which Harold Fielding and Melville Gillam present at the Palladium. It is some five years since the Palladium was first put to this use and wet or fine the company plays before full houses. This season's plays, which are changed every Wednesday, are
Verdict
,
Go Back for Murder
and
Murder on the Nile
. The plays are proof that Mrs Christie reigns supreme as the queen of detective fiction and stage thrillers and the only regret felt by residents is that there are only three plays for them to view.
⁵⁵

The fact that legendary promoter Harold Fielding appears to have assembled a season consisting entirely of Christie's worst flops is neither here nor there. And in this case we are, of course, straying perilously close to the pier, if not actually onto the end of it. But my point is that, irrespective of the context, similarly well-attended productions of Christie's work would continue to take place up and down the country throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Irrespective of her West End fortunes, Agatha Christie was to remain, indisputably, the people's playwright.

Peter Saunders, meanwhile, was continuing to consolidate his own position in the West End. He already owned the lease on the Ambassadors, and in October 1961 he bought the freehold on the Duchess. The purchase was facilitated by a bank loan organised by Edmund Cork, and this was to be the foundation of a West End theatrical property empire, based on the leases of small playhouses bought from independent owners, that would later also include at various points the Vaudeville,
the Duke of York's and the St Martin's. The following year, the Duchess would provide a home for Agatha's final West End offering, with Saunders now in the dual role of producer and landlord. But, ironically, owning the theatre was to prove no advantage when it came to scheduling the production's West End opening.

It seems that
Rule of Three
, an evening of three one-act plays, really was ‘Saunders' Folly'. In his autobiography he notes, ‘It will be remembered that one of my major successes had been
Witness for the Prosecution
, which I had persuaded Agatha Christie to write against her inclination. I had long since wanted to do a Christie evening of three one-act plays. My idea was that as many people prefer her short stories to her full-length novels, the theatre-going public might like three plays for the price of one. Agatha was very unwilling to do this, but I am afraid I didn't refrain from reminding her how right I was about
Witness for the Prosecution
and, in due course, she produced
Rule of Three
, three one-acters.'
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