More Plays and Shows

Back ◄   ► Next

It is absolutely no use telling an enthusiast of Agatha Christie thrillers that the dialogue is stilted, the characterisation threadbare and the plots often anaesthetising by their very tricksiness.

Cards on the Table which is a dramatisation by Leslie Darbon of a Christie story, is all these things, but is perfectly valid theatre for Christiephiles and, with its large and mostly suspicious cast, rapid developments of story and dizzying number of scene changes contains a full measure of excellent entertainment and is even an antidote to the kind of theatre, which critics see too often, which has three or four characters agonising or arguing on a bare stage. Moreover, it has a typically ingenious Christie opening, in which four people who have got away with murder, a writer of detective novels and a police superintendent are invited to dinner by a rich man, seemingly of Egyptian origin, whose pleasure is to see what happens. What happens is that he is quickly stabbed to death, greatly to the discomfiture of the policeman and the writer, who go on their separate but co-operative ways on an investigation.

As always, Agatha Christie is scrupulously fair on her audience. She may leave a few things unexplained but she does not hide essential facts. The genre may not be exactly played out, but these days Christie has to be done as a period piece so that we do not laugh too much at those palatial flats, french windows, obsequious servants and characters who state the obvious in the manner of holy writ. Thus in this 1935 setting we have Gordon Jackson’s sagacious Scots super, Margaret Courtenay’s bouncy, jolly, eccentric but shrewd writer and the suspects, Pauline Jameson as the elegant society lady, Gary Raymond as the dashing adventurer, Belinda Carroll as the impoverished but surprisingly smart young woman and Derek Waring as the suave doctor, all, it must be noted, good and keen bridge players. Peter Dews directs and Anthony Holland is responsible for the kind of settings only he can do well.