Kit Stroud’s Edmund Swettenham, left, Katy Barrow’s Mitzi, Victoria Beale’s Mrs Swettenham, Catherine Edge’s Letitia Blacklock, Paul Betts’s Sergeant Mellors, Adam Kadow’s Inspector Craddock, Joy Warner’s Dora ‘Bunny’ Bunner, Oscar Langford’s Patrick Simmons, Jennifer Jones’s Julia Simmons, Em Sinclair’s Phillipa Haymes and, front, Julie Russell Wilson’s Miss Marple in Agatha Christie’s A Murder Is Announced
A MURDER is announced and will take place on Friday, October the Thirteenth, at Little Paddocks at six thirty P.M. Friends, please accept this, the only intimation. So runs the public notice in the local newspaper, The Chipping Cleghorn Gazette.
You will find it on the programme cover for the Joseph Rowntree Theatre Company’s latest fundraising production for the JoRo. A landmark show too, as this is the first Miss Marple mystery to be staged there.
“Not only am I a huge Agatha Christie fan, A Murder Is Announced is my favourite Miss Marple mystery and in my top three of all Agatha Christie’s stories,” enthuses director Alex Schofield in his programme note.
This is not the only first connected with this week’s production. Appearing as Miss Marple, Julie Russell Wilson is performing her first theatre role since returning to Yorkshire last year, while Adam Kadow is making his company debut – and Christie bow too – as “dry-humoured detective” Inspector Craddock.
They give the outstanding performances in Leslie Darbon’s adroit adaptation of a murder mystery with all the classic Christie features, in Schofield’s words: “a closed group of suspects; characters who may not be what they seem and plenty of red herrings.
“But importantly it also ‘plays fair’ and gives us, her audience, the opportunity to solve the mystery, which I invite you all to do.” A group lining the auditorium wall on Thursday was seeking to do just that, somewhat excitedly in the interval, prompting a gentleman nearby to ask them to desist as he did not want his own speculations to be influenced. Such is the abiding appeal of a Christie mystery.
When so much misery about Britain’s decline percolates the airwaves, what a delight to sit back and enjoy something as indestructible as Agatha Christie’s quintessentially British crime capers. This one has a country pad, stocked with a stoical family, a loud clock, two doors into the drawing room (one barred from opening) and a paranoid Hungarian housemaid (Katy Barrow’s delightfully scatty Mitzi).
Christie’s story assembles childhood friends, the haughty Letitia Blacklock (Catherine Edge) and often befuddled Dora “Bunny” Bunner (Joy Warner), the mischievous siblings Patrick (Oscar Langford) and Julia Simmons (Jennifer Jones) and a young widow, Phillipa Haymes (Em Sinclair).
Intrigued by the newspaper announcement, enter nosy neighbour Mrs Swettenham (Victoria Beale) and, clinging to her arm, her son, unpublished writer Edmund (Kit Stroud, magnetically drawn to the wall on each entry, perhaps to hide his incongruous man-bun).
Suddenly. Lights out. Three bullets. Torch light. One dead body (Paul Betts’s Rudi Scherz). One murder for Kadow’s wry, meticulously methodical, flamboyant Craddock or Wilson’s ever astute, under-the-radar amateur sleuth Miss Marple to crack. One case? Soon make that two, spoiler alert.
Schofield’s production is fast-moving fun, led by Kadow and Wilson’s terrific turns and precise diction, with the company nailing both the humour and deadly set-pieces in Darbon’s script. Chocolate cake, a taciturn village bobby and not every costume fitting well, what a vintage British visit to the amateur theatre unfolds.
Joseph Rowntree Theatre Company in Agatha Christie’s A Murder Is Announced, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, tonight, 7.30pm (last few tickets); tomorrow, 2.30pm (sold out). Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.