Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Ruth Bradley, Ralph Ineson, Tim McInnerny, Blake Harrison, Pippa Haywood, Michael McElhatton, Bebe Cave, Brian McCardie, Dean Andrews, Samantha Spiro, Stacha Hicks, Liam McMahon, Joshua Silver, Luke Pierre, Seamus O’ Hare, Clare McMahon, Amelia Dell, Derek Halligan, Richard Doubleday.
Nobody truly disappears without a reason, whether it is in the spirit of foul play, a release from the pressure of life, or in the act of rage fuelled revenge, people don’t vanish from public life unless there is a motive lurking under the soil of the person’s existence in which leads to the art of murder being employed.
Sometimes in the pursuit of regaining the desire in which you have been handed a life changing love, you have to walk away in which to let go of what is holding you back, the required space in which to walk away for a while, not disappearing but more of an act of self-preservation, a play in which you regain the memory of what made you unique; a reason in which to be you again. It is in this act of stepping into the fire, of coming out of the flames like a phoenix transformed, in which we allow ourselves to claim amnesia, the push of life too hard to completely quell, so we either turn our mind to an act regarded as selfish, or we seek to insure we take another with us to Hell.
For Agatha Christie, her own short disappearance in 1926 has long been the source of rumour, conjecture and debate, a vanishing act that raised questions in the House of Commons and had the fans and the public concerned and gossiping in equal measure about the nature and reason for her disappearance. It is a reason never truly settled but in which has been attempted many times to be explained.
It could just be as she reported, an act of amnesia, she could not be reproached for the stress she was under, an errant husband, the then seen scandal of divorce, the lack of literary success and public waning attention, the death of her own mother, or perhaps with a finer appeal, there was always something more at the heart of the matter, revenge on her husband Archie and his mistress, the cold facts of murder in someone else’s hands. Or as writer Tom Dalton conceives, Agatha and The Art of Murder was a case that was kept quiet, an investigation into which to regain her mojo, her desire to plot and solve the most ambitious and despicable of crimes.
Murder in fiction is always memorable, and it is normally always who you think it is first, the puzzle is not in the who, but in the why, that is what makes literary murder so fascinating to solve.
A murder of a loved nurse, what possibly could be the motive, why, never who. It is in this premise that the fictional account of the 11 days in which Ms. Christie disappeared from the face of planet is explained, and with superb performances by Ruth Bradley as the acclaimed writer, Tim McInnerny as the murder victim’s cousin, Randolph, and Pippa Haywood in arguably her finest performance to date as the love of the murdered nurse, Agatha and The Art of Murder is a fine companion piece to the complexity of work written by the author.
No one truly ever disappears without reason, and whilst we may never know the true story of Ms. Christie’s own time out of the public view, it is always fun to find a possible theory in which to employ an audience’s own deduction skills and put to the test. Gratifying and pleasing, Agatha and The Art of Murder is skilfully drawn.
Ian D. Hall