A busy week for Bill Kenwright Ltd as his Agatha Christie Theatre Company open at Richmond Theatre with a triple bill of her plays under the title” Murder on Air” just a day after the Everton Chairman had splashed out £28 million on the striker Romelu Lukaku.
Simon Scullion has produced a wonderful stage set for Murder on Air, a trilogy of one act plays each lasting thirty minutes; Personal Call, The Yellow Iris and Butter in a Lordly Dish. They were all originally BBC radio plays. Brilliantly Simon Scullion has transformed the stage into a BBC radio studio, on the left-hand side of the stage a row of microphone stands occupy the front of the stage – looking like a series of Giacometti figures – behind them six chairs for the actors to sit come to the microphone return to sit again and again. On the right hand side of the stage is the sound effects area. Taking up a third of the stage space is all the paraphernalia required to make the sound effects for a radio play. Inside the space boxed in on three sides is the brilliant Alexander S. Bermange pianist and Foley artist. For those that don’t know, and I confess I didn’t , a Foley artist is someone who reproduces everyday sound effects for film and TV, usually added in post-production. His range of ingenious props are fascinating. In addition to a piano he has shoes on sticks, a heavy door with knocker, a newspaper, glasses, bottles, cups and saucers, a telephone circa 1930s, a hammer and a lettuce. The stage has the “On Air” sign which turns red when the actors are On Air. A visually stunning recreation for which Simon and his team deserve much credit.
The first play “Personal Call” cleverly begins with the actors milling around in the studio as they would in a radio studio before going live. So it takes the audience a while to realise that Personal Call has begun as Tom Conti and Jenny Seagrove with the other cast members check their microphone stands, chat and occupy the stage/studio. It’s an intriguing play on the idea of On Air and just one of many examples of the creative playfulness and sheer delight in the possibilities of live performance that the Company relish. This life/theatre analogy runs through all three plays. “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” said Shakespeare. Agatha Christie would agree but she would I think alter the word “merely” for human beings are consummate players in her view. They are skilful, highly manipulative and some of them, those that interest her, calculating murderers. Her fascination with the darker side of us clearly resonates with others because her novels have sold in their millions. And indeed Richmond Theatre was sold out last Thursday.
Like Hitchcock in “Dial M for Murder” Agatha Christie spotted the power of the telephone call to create dramatic tension. She uses it to interrupt James Brent played by Tom Conti as he is at a cocktail party. He receives a call via the operator a “Personal Call “. The sound effects on stage were inevitably compounded by the sound of mobile ringtones going off in the audience. However this did not elicit the usual tut tuts but instead a fascinating irony : is that part of the play or is that someone’s mobile? Raising the intriguing possibility that someone in that audience was receiving a Personal Call and she too was going to be murdered? If there can be Murder on Air then why not Murder in the Audience?
The play turns on the ability of the murdered woman’s mother to imitate her late daughter’s voice on the phone and to entrap James Brent the serial murderer. Both James Brent and the mother are consummate players. James in his use of charm to marry and murder rich women and the mother in her ability to use cunning to con a professional conman. What we show and what we are, being two entirely different things. This is Agatha Christie’s view of men and women.
The night I was there “The Yellow Iris” didn’t really work because the piano playing was too high or the microphones were to low, but whatever the reasons the audience found it hard to follow and indeed some audience members shouted out “can’t hear”.
The third play “Butter in a Lordly Dish” was tremendous. Sir Luke Enderby – a nice pun as he is about to meet his End – is a high court judge and womaniser. He arranges to go away with his latest conquest to her country cottage. She appears to be a well-spoken upper middle class lady, in fact she is the cockney widow of the convicted murderer Sir Luke has recently sent down. She puts poison in his coffee – Agatha Christie worked in a pharmacy surrounded by poisons during the Great War – and as he becomes incapacitated she reveals her identity – brilliantly changing linguistic register from received pronunciation to Cockney, torments him and finally tells him she will be driving a nail through his forehead with a hammer. Hence the title which comes from the Biblical tale of Jael and Sisera. As she torments him Alexander Bermange holds a lettuce in his left hand and puts a nail into it, he then picks up the hammer with his right hand and proceeds to hammer the nail in as bits of the lettuce fly off in all directions he says “you have been watching Butter in A Lordly Dish…with Tom Conti..Jenny Seagrove … “as if it were the final credits for “Dad’s Army”. It is truly electrifying grotesque/comic moment. I loved it. This play has some wonderfully comic moments. Lady Luke Enderby to her friend “I hang paintings, he hangs people “ or talking of Sir Lukes womanising her friend asks if he was faithful on the honeymoon! Agatha Christie was a genius, she was a monomaniac who saw murder everywhere, especially in “safe” suburbs like Richmond. Millions clearly agree with her. Just next door to the Richmond Theatre the Richmond Lending Library has a crime fiction section which is bigger than all the other sections by far. Much of that fiction is either by or inspired by Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller 1890 – 1976.
For an evening’s entertainment you can’t go wrong.
