Pig of a plot has all usual suspects

Go back for Murder, Opera House, Manchester
WATCH Agatha Christie’s stories on TV and, handled by great adapters and made in exotic locations by top performers, they work.

But over the years we’ve seen lots of productions of Agatha Christie thrillers on stage and they mostly share one strong trait: they’re pretty awful, creaky and old-fashioned.

This is one of the queen of crime’s more interesting works, but even this has a period look and feel that isn’t attractive.

Originally the novel “Five Little Pigs”, it plays out the circumstances of the murder of an artist from the viewpoints of each of the suspects, with the solution worked out in leading character Hercule Poirot’s head.

Christie adapted the story as this play in 1960, replacing Poirot with the extra determination of Carla, the daughter of the woman wrongly convicted of her artist husband Amyas’s death, and a young solicitor, Fogg, who watched the original trial, in which his father presented the defence.

The play’s first half, in 1968, gives us the circumstances in a series of interviews between Carla and the five suspects: brothers Meredith and Philip, Caroline’s half-sister Angela, Caroline’s love rival — artist’s model Elsa — and governess Miss Williams, along with lots of red herrings and motives for murder. The second takes us back to a reconstruction of the fateful scene in 1948.

So far, an interesting premise, some way ahead of its time — but stifled by the theatre conventions of the period, not to mention Christie’s own style and dialogue.

This production enjoys an audience-luring usual-suspects roster of actors: Liza Goddard as the governess, Robert Duncan as Philip, Sophie Ward as Carla and her late mother, and Lysette Anthony as the model — plus Gary Mavers, Ben Nealon, Anthony Eldridge and newcomer Georgia Neville as the deceased, the solicitor, Meredith and Angela respectively.

Though Duncan, Eldridge, Goddard and Neville offer straightforward, watchable performances, Sophie Ward is a bit Jekyll and Hyde-like: rather good as the mother in 1948, but awful as the daughter in 1968, while Anthony is so mannered as a young woman and as her older version (admittedly in a badly-written role), it’s like watching a cartoon character at work.

Many will enjoy the evening for its familiar faces and familiar plot development — but many might wish they had stayed at home and watched another rerun of “Poirot”.