Paul Keating’s Hector MacQueen, left, Bob Barrett’s Monsieur Bouc and Michael Maloney’s Hercule Poirot in discussion in Lucy Bailey’s production of Agatha Christie’s Murder On The Orient Express
FIERY Angel first brought a Lucy Bailey production of an Agatha Christie murder mystery to the Grand Opera House in November 2023.
And Then There Were None is now followed by Murder On The Orient Express, and then there will be three, at some point, when the already confirmed Death On The Nile goes on the road.
Production values are high once more, not least a cast of 15, complemented Mike Britton’s revolve set design, Oliver Fenwick’s light design (where dark is as important as light), Mic Pool’s ever-excellent sound design and in particular Ian William Galloway’s video design of train wheels in motion, plumes of steam, sparks on the tracks and a towering image of the gleaming, immaculate, noble Orient Express: the pedigree racehorse of engines.
Leah Hausman’s movement direction sets the tone. Bailey’s cast gathers, seen side on, at first moving in tandem like dancers, but then juddering and shuddering too, ill at ease, commotion in motion, rather than graceful.
Suddenly, a scream, whereupon they part like the Red Sea, and who should walk through but esteemed Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actor Michael Maloney’s Hercule Poirot, face on, instantly establishing his separate path from the rest.
Interestingly, he appears to be the voice completing the scream, the first indication that this will be a more harrowing interpretation of Poirot, where he will raise his voice to anger and anguish in a manner not seen in the revered, unflustered performances of Poirot forebears such as Peter Ustinov and David Suchet.
The little grey cells seem more frazzled than usual, still troubled by his handling of his previous case in Syria, shown in flashback here, and by his sense of foreboding of what hell is soon to be unleashed on Europe (to which he makes reference at the denouement of this 1934 case).
Nevertheless, Maloney’s Poirot remains immaculate in couture, his moustache trim (rather than the absurdist facial topiary favoured by Kenneth Branagh’s cinematic reinvention), his accent distinctly Belgian, rather than French, his manner and method meticulous.
One by one, American playwright Ken Ludwig’s witty stage adaptation of Christie’s novel – premiered in New Jersey in 2017 and now touring the UK for the first time – introduces everyone on board, staff and passengers alike.
Poirot is the guest of his Belgian friend in Istanbul, train company director Monsieur Bouc (Bob Barrett, accent prone to meander back to Blighty from the European mainland), a jolly soul who will play Watson to his Sherlock as they journey to London.
A journey that will be halted by an avalanche that stops the Orient Express in its track. Cue a murder, exit Samuel Ratchett (later to be revealed as a murderous gangster, Cassetti). But whodunit? The killer must still be on board, and Poirot has a train load of suspects to work through. Some of the acting is a tad suspect too, it must be said, nothing criminal, but sometimes guilty of over-acting, although deliberately so in the case of Christine Kavanagh’s thoroughly thespian American actress Helen Hubbard.
Mila Carter, early in her professional career, impresses as Countess Elena; Debbie Chazen has fun as the waspish, grand Princess Dragmiroff; French actor Jean-Baptiste Fillon conducts himself well as French conductor Michel.
You will enjoy – almost as much as Monsieur Bouc does – the running joke of Poirot being assumed to be French by all and sundry, but maybe less so the more tortured interpretation of Poirot and the uneven performances around him, faced with the challenge of a tale of vengeance that swings from farcical comedy to “profound darkness”.
Bailey’s reading of Poirot explains Maloney’s potentially Marmite performance. “I don’t think you’re always meant to like him, at least not in the way Christie writes him,” she writes in her programme note. “There’s a sort of otherness to him in that he’s Belgian and very polite and very petite!
“He’s full of neuroses and is obsessed with order, cleanliness and personal presentation. He lives by all these rules but paradoxically he’s tremendously eccentric and bursting with energy, charm and enthusiasm.” Maloney ticks boxes aplenty, but less so the charm here.
The other central character is the train itself, the Orient Express, which gives a five-star performance in Mike Britton’s design, revolving to reveal both interior and exterior, corridors and compartments: the star turn in fact.
Fiery Angel presents Agatha Christie’s Murder On The Orient Express, Grand Opera House, York, keeping on track until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.