Agatha Christie, adapted by Ken Ludwig Fiery Angel Productions The Lowry, Salford September 6-14, 2024; 2hr 10min
To successfully retell the Murder on the Orient Express story for the stage you need to solve two problems. One: how to portray the train. Two: how to make a twisty whodunnit, with an incredibly well-known twist, feel fresh and relevant. It could so easily fall off the rails.
What a joy to discover writer Ken Ludwig and director Lucy Bailey have used all their little grey cells to create something slick, smart and super enjoyable.
The quandary surrounding problem number one is only exacerbated when the audience arrives to find a darkened, empty stage. Smoke billows and a train horn occasionally blows in the distance, but there are no tracks, no luxury carriages and no sense of how on earth they're going to do it.
Of course, Christie's classic doesn't start on board. It starts in the dining room of an Istanbul hotel.
In a masterfully-directed sequence, Mike Britton’s set rapidly revolves to allow famed detective Hercule Poirot (Michael Maloney) to encounter the cast of characters around him: a secretive bunch, destined to become Poirot’s fellow passengers, and then suspects.
Thanks to a chance encounter with old friend and train operator Monsieur Bouc (Bob Barrett), Poirot gains a berth on the train. He meets the rest of his travelling companions on the platform. There aren’t as many as in the book, but we still get insufferable Americans, a countess, a princess, the illicit couple and the put-upon help.
Then the magic begins. With another neat use of the revolve, the gorgeous period carriages are finally revealed. There are side-on scenes through windows into corridors, action between cut-out compartments and even use of the rattling observation car. Understudy ensemble members, cleverly dressed as railway engineers, haul the theatrical jigsaw pieces into place. It doesn’t always work but the ambition is top notch, and the result is still brilliantly engaging, all aided by modern movement direction and shadowy, atmospheric video projections.
Before long, of course, there is a body. A dead body, lots of clues and a mystery to test both Poirot’s skills of deduction and his moral compass.
Maloney is pitch-perfect as Christie’s most famous creation. Thoughtful, exasperating, full of humour, full of rage. His performance is never parody, never pastiche and always eminently watchable.
Barrett is clearly having a fabulous time as Poirot’s sidekick Bouc and the rapport between the two actors is delicious. As Helen Hubbard, Christine Kavanagh delivers a period tour de force.
The other members of the cast are just as good. It’s a tricky balance to present clearly-drawn characters and maintain the complexity without slipping into caricature. No one drops the ball.
What’s most impressive, though, is Bailey’s bravery in the second half. The train carriage set shenanigans are stripped away and what’s left is a simple study of human nature.
A murder flashback is unflinchingly gruesome, the cast members reveal their characters’ dark secrets in cinematic script recalls and a final, front of curtain scene proves this classic still has a timely question to ask of us.
All in all, first class.
Tickets and information here.
