Curtain Up (77 page)

I can think of no better phrase to sum up Christie's legacy as a dramatist than that adopted by J.C. Trewin in his entertaining contribution to H.R.F. Keating's
Agatha Christie, First Lady of Crime
(1977). Hers was indeed ‘A Midas gift to the theatre'. Theatrical empires, from Peter Saunders to Cameron Mackintosh, have been founded on her work, which has been seen and enjoyed in countless productions in numerous languages around the world. In 2001 the Agatha Christie Theatre Festival, comprising her complete dramatic works as then known, was staged over twelve weeks at the Palace Theatre, Westcliff-on-Sea. Five years later the Agatha Christie Theatre Company was established; presented by Bill Kenwright and endorsed by her estate, it has since enjoyed great success touring her plays in the UK. In Hubert Gregg's words, ‘She has defied changes of taste, sharpenings of critical view, the breaking of New Waves. She is a mighty anomaly. A square peg in a round world.'
¹
In the extraordinarily small window of opportunity between entrusting her theatrical work to Peter Saunders in 1950 and the Royal Court revolution of 1956, she wrote, as a woman in her sixties, four hit plays:
The Hollow
,
The Mousetrap
,
Witness for the Prosecution
and
Spider's Web
. In doing so she created the longest-running piece of theatre of all time and became the only woman ever to have three plays running in the West End simultaneously. As Trewin puts it, Christie ‘fortified the theatre of entertainment'.

Arguably the principal beneficiary of Christie's ‘Midas gift' was Peter Saunders, who was quoted as saying that the true extent of his earnings from
The Mousetrap
was ‘a secret between God and my accountant'.
²
Saunders remarks in his book, ‘People have said to me, “You are lucky. Anyone could make money with the Agatha Christie plays.” But was it luck? . . . I was the lowliest of all the producers at the time, and there is no question that if anybody else had “recognised this opportunity and taken advantage of it”
they
could have had the Christie plays . . . No. Luck has only a minimal part to play in the success of a producer.'
³
He was knighted in 1982, an honour never afforded to Binkie Beaumont, retired to his Bishop's Avenue House, Monkswell, in 1994, happy in the company of his second wife, Katie Boyle, and died, aged ninety-one, in 2003. Edmund Cork had died in 1988 at the age of ninety-four, having represented Agatha Christie for sixty-five years. Bertie Meyer had died in 1967, aged ninety.

According to Saunders'
Daily Telegraph
obituary, ‘Unsurprisingly, he lamented in 1955, “I don't want people to think that Mrs Christie's is the only egg I can sit on”. Saunders was, in fact, a highly skilled producer of more than 100 plays, many of them in the West End and on Broadway. He was particularly associated with comedies and light thrillers, including
Alfie
;
Arsenic and Old Lace
;
No Sex Please, We're British
;
and
Lloyd George Knew My Father
.'
⁴

Former
Sunday Times
critic Harold Hobson, in
The Mousetrap
's fortieth anniversary brochure, eulogises him thus:

No man without an extraordinary degree of fighting spirit and determination could have done what he did; that is overthrow the nearest thing to a monopoly we have ever come to in the theatrical profession. During and after the war the H.M. Tennent management dominated the London theatre. Tennent's did a great deal of admirable work in the theatre, and gained a great reputation for their polish and style. But the role they played came to restrict unduly the activities of other managements, and consequently the
range of theatre itself. Many managements chafed impotently under the hardships inflicted on them by this monopoly but only Peter Saunders studied the laws governing the theatre so carefully that he was able to establish in the realm of the drama an era of managerial freedom . . . Much of the most influential opinion in the theatre world of the last quarter of the century (and even before) has been built on the assumption that somehow there is something disgraceful in giving pleasure in the theatre . . . Fortunately, Peter Saunders has never believed this absurd fallacy any more than Shakespeare, Dr Johnson, or the greatest of French dramatists did. Believing then, as he does, in entertainment, he has demonstrated the potency of this belief with rare power. Few others have done it so unequivocally.
⁵

That Saunders ran this article with pride in a publication of his own indicates that he was happy to be known as the man responsible for the ‘overthrow' of Tennents; and the plays with which he achieved this extraordinary David and Goliath feat were, of course, Christie's.

After Christie's death, third-party adaptations of her novels continued to arrive in the West End with depressing regularity, confusing and sullying her own reputation as a playwright. Saunders himself was responsible for commissioning and producing two pedestrian adaptations from Leslie Darbon:
A Murder is Announced
(1977), starring Dulcie Gray as Miss Marple, and
Cards on the Table
(1981), both presented at his own Vaudeville Theatre. The less said about these ventures the better, and Saunders, of all people, should arguably have been more respectful of Christie's dramatic legacy; although she had agreed to the adaptation of
A Murder is Announced
before her death and at least Poirot was cut from
Cards on the Table
, as she no doubt would have wished. In 1993 Clive Exton's adaptation of
Murder is Easy
played for a few weeks at the Duke of York's and in 2005 Kevin Elyot's unnecessary new adaptation of the novel
And Then There Were None
played for a few
months at the Gielgud, giving the story, according to press announcements, a ‘pulp fiction revamp' which was ‘awash with blood'.
⁶
I saw it, and it was. Another unnecessary adaptation was Louise Page's new version of
Love From a Stranger
, premiered at the Mill at Sonning in 2010. Christie herself had a very low opinion of other people's dramatic tinkerings with her work but, with yet more stage adaptations in the pipeline, it seems that her own remarkable legacy as a dramatist is doomed to recede ever further towards a hidden horizon.

In 1992, British Telecom controversially ended a major sponsorship deal with the Royal Shakespeare Company in favour of supporting a sadly rather low-rent commercial tour of
Witness for the Prosecution
.
Guardian
theatre critic Michael Billington was outraged: ‘Why in heaven's name switch their support from the greatest popular dramatist in history to arguably the worst popular dramatist of this century?' he demanded. ‘Where BT once got brownie-points for backing Shakespeare tours, I see no kudos arising from its association with Mrs C.'
⁷
British Telecom, however, were more than happy to eschew ‘kudos' in favour of reaching the widest possible audience demographic over a forty-week nationwide tour. Their spokesman said, ‘It is important to note that traditionally sponsorship from major companies is directed towards opera, ballet and classical theatre. BT recognises that in serving the whole of the community which in turn are probably BT subscribers in every socio-economic group, we should address as large a segment of the population as possible.'
⁸
Like the People's Entertainment Society, BT had recognised Christie's status as the people's playwright. The irony was that Christie herself would have regarded Shakespeare as fulfilling that brief.

Billington's appraisal of Christie's work is based on his belief that ‘She is a lousy dramatist precisely because her dialogue is a function of plot rather than an index of character. I can still hear, from the days when I worked in rep, the agonising groans that used to go up from actors when forced to animate the walking dead in yet another revival of
Peril at End House
.' I hope that this book has gone some way towards challenging
that preconception, but in any event I would respectfully point out that, as a national newspaper's theatre critic, Mr Billington should be aware that
Peril at End House
is not in fact an Agatha Christie play.

Gwen Robyns asks, ‘Will Agatha Christie's plays stand the test of time like those of Somerset Maugham or Noël Coward? They may date . . . but they do recall a visual nostalgia for a middle-class way of life that will never return to England. Of spacious, chintzy country houses, cultivated morning-room talk, impeccable servants, bowls of potpourri, croquet on the lawn, Earl Grey tea poured from Georgian silver, and wafer-thin brown bread cucumber sandwiches. Perhaps this is what many of us are longing for.'
⁹

This misrepresentation of Christie as a playwright is by no means unique to Robyns, and seems to be some sort of confusion with the image portrayed in film and television adaptations of some of her novels or, indeed with plays adapted from her work by third parties. Of the fifteen of her own plays which were performed in her lifetime, few come anywhere close to the setting described above, and even those that do are notable for the absence of cucumber sandwiches, Earl Grey tea and croquet on the lawn.

And Then There Were None
,
The Hollow
,
The Mousetrap
,
Witness for the Prosecution
,
Spider's Web
and
The Unexpected Guest
are six substantial, hugely successful plays which between them represent a notable contribution to the British dramatic repertoire. The less successful
Black Coffee
,
Murder on the Nile
,
Appointment with Death
,
Verdict
,
Go Back for Murder
and
Rule of Three
are a further six that continue to do very well off the back of the others.
A Daughter's a Daughter
,
Fiddlers Three
,
Akhnaton
(premiered on the fringe after Christie's death) and
Chimneys
remain barely performed and do not form part of the established Christie canon. The version of
Towards Zero
that she didn't write continues to be performed and included in anthologies, whilst the one that she did write has never been published, and has not been produced since its week at Martha's Vineyard Playhouse.
The Wasp's Nest
has
never been given the stage presentation for which it was written, and a short play possibly intended for puppets has been published but not performed. A further five full-length plays and six one-act plays remain unpublished and, as far as we know, unperformed.

Christie's two masterpieces of dramatic construction,
Witness for the Prosecution
and
And Then There Were None
, are not detective stories and represent, in each case, the absolute pinnacle of their respective genres: often imitated but never bettered. Meanwhile,
The Lie
,
A Daughter's a Daughter
and
Verdict
give a tantalising glimpse of the playwright that Christie might have been had she not acceded to the seemingly unending demand for thrillers from her producers and audiences. As we have seen, much of her early work, like that of Clemence Dane, examines then much-debated issues such as divorce and eugenics; she even, in the mid-1920s, took on the subject of what was at that time regarded as incest. In
The Mousetrap
, the lady of the house struggles across the stage with a carpet sweeper four years before the sight of a woman doing the ironing caused a sensation at the Royal Court, and in 1961 the censor banned her from using the word ‘homo' three years before Joe Orton's
Entertaining Mr Sloane
. In
The Last Séance
the stage was literally ‘awash with blood' and in
Fiddlers Five
, to the horror of her family, the newly appointed Dame appeared to condone hoodwinking the taxman.

Christie colluded with neither the patriarchy nor the censor with respect to the content of her plays, which consistently and wittily subverted both. However, in order to get her work to the stage, and thus gain access to the theatrical world and companionship that she so cherished, she was frequently obliged to dance to other people's tunes. Or at least to appear to. Christie's theatrical fortunes were, of course, inextricably linked to those of Peter Saunders, but it is important to remember that, for her, playwriting was a source of creative fulfilment rather then necessary income, and that the ‘Midas gift' of her theatrical imagination gave audiences an extraordinary range of work that often challenged and surprised them.

I will leave the last word with Agatha herself, as she describes the first night of
Witness for the Prosecution
:

I was happy, radiantly happy, and made even more so by the applause of the audience. I slipped away as usual after the curtain came down on
my
ending and out into Long Acre. In a few moments, while I was looking for a waiting car, I was surrounded by crowds of friendly people, quite ordinary members of the audience, who recognised me, patted me on the back and encouraged me – ‘Best you've written, dearie!' ‘First class-thumbs up, I'd say!' ‘V-signs for this one!' and ‘Loved every minute of it!' Autograph books were produced and I signed cheerfully and happily. My self-consciousness and nervousness, just for once, were not with me. Yes it was a memorable evening. I am proud of it still. And every now and then I dig into the memory chest, bring it out, take a look at it, and say ‘That was the night, that was!'
¹⁰

With a small number of exceptions, plays referred to in this book by writers other than Agatha Christie are not included in this bibliography. Similarly, novels and short stories by Agatha Christie that are referred to but which were not adapted for the stage in her lifetime are not listed here. There are numerous websites and books offering ‘definitive' lists of Christie's published work and, of these, Robert Barnard's
A Talent to Deceive
(Collins, 1980) includes a particularly helpful record of the UK and US publication histories of her novels and short stories in book form in her lifetime. Publication dates listed below are for UK first editions unless otherwise indicated.

ACA = The Agatha Christie Archive (Christie Archive Trust)

LCP = Lord Chamberlain's Plays collection, British Library

The Plays of Agatha Christie

Plays that were performed in Agatha Christie's lifetime appear in the order in which they were premiered. Others appear in approximate order of writing.

A Masque from Italy

      
Original one-act stage play

      
Typescript in ACA

      
Unperformed

      
First published:
The Road of Dreams
, Geoffrey Bles, 1924

The Conqueror

      
Original one-act stage play

      
Typescript in ACA

      
Unperformed/unpublished

Teddy Bear

      
Original one-act stage play

      
Typescript in ACA

      
Unperformed/unpublished

Eugenia and Eugenics

      
Original one-act stage play

      
Typescript in ACA

      
Unperformed/unpublished

The Clutching Hand

      
Full-length stage play

      
Adapted from:
The Exploits of Elaine
(novel by Arthur B. Reeve: Hearst's International Library, USA, 1915/Hodder & Stoughton, 1915)

      
Typescript in ACA

      
Unperformed/unpublished

The Last S
éance

      
Original one-act stage play

      
Typescript in ACA

      
Unperformed

      
Play unpublished. Published as short story in
The Hound of Death
, Odhams, 1933

Ten Years

      
Original one-act stage play

      
Typescript in ACA

      
Unperformed/unpublished

Marmalade Moon

      
Original one-act stage play

      
Typescript in ACA

      
Unperformed/unpublished

The Lie

      
Original full-length stage play

      
Typescript in ACA

      
Unperformed/unpublished

Chimneys

      
Full-length stage play

      
Adapted from:
The Secret of Chimneys
(novel: John Lane, 1925)

      
Typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1931/40

      
First performed: 16 October 2003, Vertigo Theatre, Calgary

      
Unpublished

1930:
Black Coffee

      
Original full-length stage play

      
No typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1930/52

      
First performed: 8 December 1930, Embassy Theatre, London

      
First published: Alfred Ashley, 1934

The Wasp's Nest

      
One-act stage play

      
Adapted from: ‘The Wasp's Nest' (short story: originally published in
Daily Mail
, 20 Nov 1928, included in
Double Sin
, Dodd, Mead & Co., USA, 1961/
Poirot's Early Cases
, Collins, 1974)

      
Typescript in ACA

      
Unperformed on stage (broadcast on BBC Television, 18 June 1937)

      
Unpublished

The Stranger

      
Full-length stage play

      
Adapted from: ‘Philomel Cottage' (short story: included in
The Listerdale Mystery
, Collins, 1934)

      
Typescript in ACA

      
Unperformed/unpublished

Someone at the Window

      
Full-length stage play

      
Adapted from: ‘The Dead Harlequin' (short story: included in
The Mysterious Mr Quin
, Collins, 1930)

      
Typescript in ACA

      
Unperformed/unpublished

Akhnaton

      
Original full-length stage play

      
Typescript in ACA

      
First performed: Fountains Abbey Pub Theatre, London, January 1980

      
First published: Collins, 1973

1943:
Ten Little Niggers (
aka
Ten Little Indians/And Then There Were None)

      
Full-length stage play

      
Adapted from:
Ten Little Niggers
(novel: Collins, 1939)

      
No typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1943/16

      
First performed: 20 September 1943, Wimbledon Theatre, London

      
First published: Samuel French, 1944

1944:
Hidden Horizon (
aka
Murder on the Nile)

      
Full-length stage play

      
Adapted from:
Death on the Nile
(novel: Collins, 1937)

      
Typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1943/35

      
First performed: 17 January 1944, Dundee Repertory Theatre

      
First published: Samuel French, 1948

1945:
Appointment with Death

      
Full-length stage play

      
Adapted from:
Appointment with Death
(novel: Collins, 1938)

      
No typescript in ACA. LCP Ref:1944/39

      
First performed: 29 January 1945, King's Theatre, Glasgow

      
First published: Samuel French, 1956

1945:
Towards Zero

      
Full-length stage play

      
Adapted from:
Towards Zero
(novel: Collins, 1944)

      
Typescript in ACA, donated by the Shubert Organisation

      
First performed: Martha's Vineyard Playhouse, 4 September 1945

      
Unpublished

1951:
The Hollow (
aka
The Suspects)

      
Full-length stage play

      
Adapted from:
The Hollow
(novel: Collins, 1946)

      
No typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1950/62

      
First performed: 5 February 1951, Cambridge Arts Theatre

      
First published: Samuel French, 1952

1952:
The Mousetrap

      
Full-length stage play

      
Adapted from:
Three Blind Mice
(radio play: broadcast by the BBC, 30 May 1947) and ‘Three Blind Mice' (short story: included in
Three Blind Mice
, Dodd, Mead & Co., USA, 1950)

      
Typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1952/45

      
First performed: 6 October 1952, Theatre Royal, Nottingham

      
First published: Samuel French, 1954

1953:
Witness for the Prosecution

      
Full-length stage play

      
Adapted from: ‘The Witness for the Prosecution' (short story: included in
The Hound of Death
, Odhams, 1933)

      
Typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1953/46

      
First performed: 28 September 1953, Theatre Royal, Nottingham

      
First published: Samuel French, 1954

1954:
Spider's Web

      
Original full-length stage play

      
Typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1954/47

      
First performed: 27 September 1954, Theatre Royal, Nottingham

      
First published: Samuel French, 1957

1956:
A Daughter's a Daughter
by Mary Westmacott

      
Original full-length stage play

      
Typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1956/35

      
First performed: 9 July 1956, Theatre Royal, Bath

      
Play unpublished. Published as novel by Mary Westmacott: Heinemann, 1952

1958:
Verdict

      
Original full-length stage play

      
Typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1957/56

      
First performed: 25 February 1958, Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton

      
First published: Samuel French, 1958

1958:
The Unexpected Guest

      
Original full-length stage play

      
No typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1958/30

      
First performed: 4 August 1958, Hippodrome, Bristol

      
First published: Samuel French, 1958

1960:
Go Back for Murder

      
Full-length stage play

      
Adapted from:
Five Little Pigs
(novel: Dodd, Mead & Co., USA, as
Murder In Restrospect
, 1942; Collins, 1943)

      
No typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1960/5

      
First performed: 22 February 1960, King's Theatre, Edinburgh

      
First published: Samuel French, 1960

1962:
Rule of Three (The Rats, Afternoon at the Seaside, The Patient)

      
Three original one-act stage plays

      
Typescript in ACA. LCP Ref: 1961/49

      
First performed: 6 November 1961, His Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen

      
First published (individually): Samuel French, 1963

Miss Perry

      
Original full-length stage play

      
Typescript in ACA

      
Unperformed/unpublished

1971:
Fiddlers Five (aka Fiddlers Three)

      
Original full-length stage play

      
Typescript in ACA

      
First performed: 7 June 1971, King's Theatre, Southsea

Unpublished

Plays adapted from Agatha Christie's work in her lifetime by other writers

Alibi (
aka
The Fatal Alibi)

      
Adapted by Michael Morton from
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
(novel: Collins, 1926)

      
First published: Samuel French, 1929

Love from a Stranger

      
Adapted by Frank Vosper from
The Stranger
(original stage play: unpublished/ACA)

      
Published: Collins, 1936/Samuel French, 1937

Tea for Three

      
Adapted by Margery Vosper from ‘Accident' (short story: included in
The Listerdale Mystery
, Collins, 1934)

      
First published:
Theatrecraft Plays Book Two
, Nelson & Sons, 1939

Peril at End House

      
Adapted by Arnold Ridley from
Peril at End House
(novel: Collins, 1932)

      
First published: Samuel French, 1945

Murder at the Vicarage

      
Adapted by Moie Charles and Barbara Toy from
The Murder at the Vicarage
(novel: Collins, 1930)

      
First published: Samuel French, 1950

Towards Zero

      
Adapted by Gerald Verner (with nominal assistance from Agatha Christie) from
Towards Zero
(novel: Collins, 1944)

Published: Dramatists Play Service, USA, 1957/Samuel French 1958

Other plays of interest

Casson, Lewis (adapted from Level, Maurice),
Crime
(unpublished: LCP 1921/28)

Coward, Noël,
This Year of Grace
(Chappell, 1928)

Coward, Noël,
The Better Half
(1922 – published in Hand, Richard J. and Wilson, Michael,
London's Grand Guignol and the Theatre of Horror
, 2007)