Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Paul Nicholas, Colin Buchanan, Susan Penhaligon, Mark Curry, Verity Rushworth, Frazer Hines, Ben Nealon, Eric Carte, Judith Rae, Paul Hassall, Jan Knightley.
Justice, it should be seen as being above all. The knowledge that justice must not only be done but seen to be done is the overriding factor in any democratic society. What happens when justice is served by an unhinged mind? The reasons of impartiality become skewed and twisted and whilst it gets the job of retribution done, the voyeuristic viewer becomes entangled in the right of death debate too closely.
Joe Harmston’s stage version of the Agatha Christie classic And Then There Were None evokes that spirit of confinement and claustrophobic exposure to the point where it is perhaps the most faithful of all adaptations of the famous work and in helped in no short measure by the superb casting in which carries this colossus of British detective literature authentically into the hearts of the theatre audience.
There is always a danger that a theatrical representation of any of literature’s great detectives could come off as bland in detail when dealing with the imagination and near perfect written nuances of the author’s work. However in the Agatha Christie Theatre Company’s edict, those doubts have always been easily snuffed out and in And Then There Were None, there was everything to applaud from a Wolverhampton audience being treated to a generous technical and devoted performance.
By confining the action throughout to just one room, the feeling of exposed confinement was heightened, the beautifully designed set adding 1930’s sophistication and taste to the thought of Pre-War tension, the play never let go of the sentimental grip a fan of Agatha Christie might have for the book, nor allowed it to become anything less than stirring. Even if you know the story well, the subtle way of misdirecting the audience’s attention away from the truth was so well played out that it was impossible not feel that the legendary author would have applauded just as hard as anyone in the audience.
Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, in which ever format of title it is remembered in history for, works so well because it hits home at one of the psychological reasons why the British seem to love crime drama and the restoration of justice. It plays with the idea of justice being done but off kilter, warped, psycho-professionally. That justice cannot be out run and the claustrophobic feel of justice being ever near, like a lingering smell of rotting cheese under a floorboard just out of sight, it catches in the nostrils and you don’t see it coming. As with television’s Dexter, a killer bringing retribution to the law and justice in And Then There Were None is one that appeases both the sense of truth being served and the nervousness that retribution is being manipulated by a wrong hand, in Joe Harmston’s version of And Then There Were None, classic manipulation is the best sleight of hand.
A production performed with true respect to the ideal of the original text. Superb!
Ian D. Hall