Christie thriller a guilty pleasure
Latest whodunnit entertains audiences at Milton Keynes Theatre.
THERE'S a great camaraderie in watching an Agatha Christie thriller. Complete strangers among theatre audiences strike up conversations in a bid to solve the mystery and name the killer.
It's a sad reflection of my life that invariably it takes me about five minutes to get my man, any longer and I suffer a profound sense of failure. I've become adept at unravelling the clues and unmasking the culprit almost before the end of the first scene.
And thus it was when Witness For The Prosecution played at Milton Keynes Theatre last week. Who dunnit ? Wasn't it obvious?
Witness was the latest in a string of successful Christie dramas staged by Bill Kenwright's talented Agatha Christie Theatre Company which has been touring the country for the last few years bringing the crime writer's more obscure thrillers to the stage.
And judged against those this has to have been the least successful not because of the acting, which was, as usual, highly professional and expertly delivered by a cast of TV and theatre stalwarts, but because of the pedestrian plot.
We didn't get to see the murder, which is usually an early high point in the drama, and only learned about it third hand. Nor were we presented with an array of likely suspects, methods of murder or motives. All were sadly lacking.
An old lady had befriended a Good Samaritan who had helped carry parcels back to her home. Some time later, after he had cultivated a friendship with the old dear, she had been found dead.
The Samaritan, a likeable chap called Leonard Vole, was on his uppers, so obviously the peelers jumped to the conclusion that he dunnit. Or did he?
Pretty much the entire story took place in the courtroom so the audience would have got the same satisfaction if they'd packed their knitting and headed to the Old Bailey or their local crown court for the day.
We were nothing more than voyeurs to a trial and, after a while, no matter how gripping the testimony, how eccentric the witnesses or how riveting the verbal ripostes between prosecution and defence counsel, I felt a little hard done by.
It's unfair of me to criticise because part of my job involves covering court cases and I've seen more than most – murderers, rapists, burglars and arsonists all brought before the beak and their futures decided on the verdicts of 12 good men and true.
So I felt cheated watching yet another trial as an evening's entertainment. The drama played out in a court no longer thrills as it once did.
In the case of Witness we had a bargain basement jury of just six. Now if multi-millionaire Bill K couldn't afford a full complement why didn't the theatre venues fill the benches with willing volunteers from the audience?
This happens in JB Priestley's An Inspector Calls when it's on tour and it's always a popular stunt.
We had a top notch cast as usual. The handsome Ben Nealon played Vole as a simple naive chap who loved little old ladies and wouldn't dream of harming them even if all the evidence pointed in his direction.
His wife Romaine (Lisa Kay) was a bit of an enigma complete with dodgy accent and dubious past. Being a Jenny Foreigner she obviously must have done it.
Then there's the housekeeper, the dotty Janet McKenzie (Jennifer Wilson), who missed out on an inheritance. She must have been the culprit.
Taking centre stage in court for the prosecution was Christie Company regular Mark Wynter and, for the defence, Drop The Dead Donkey's Robert Duncan as solicitor Mr Mayhew, and The Royal's Denis Lill as the charismatic, commanding and totally convincing barrister Sir Wilfred Roberts QC.
But all three actors were under-used, as too was veteran Peter Byrne as the crusty old judge.
Duncan is a great actor who we just don't see enough. He spends most of the performance sitting in court with a glazed expression on his face.
Witness For The Prosecution ends on a high but, alas, a predictable one for an experienced old crime hack such as myself. But the audience seemed to enjoy it and that's what matters.
Next up from the company in 2011 is Verdict.
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