And Then There Were None — Newcastle Theatre Royal

Writer: Agatha Christie

Director: Lucy Bailey

If you’ve never seen an adaptation of Agatha Christie’s most widely-read work, you’ve almost certainly seen something heavily inspired by it. Though Christie first adapted her novel to the stage in 1943, there is a seemingly everlasting potency to the story of And Then There Were None: ten strangers trapped on an island, helpless as they begin to drop like flies, none of them safe and any one of them the possible ‘who’ in the whodunnit. Yet, in a modern era when audiences are desensitised to depictions of murder and violence, Lucy Bailey’s production of Christie’s classic does well to lean into the dark, sometimes even absurd, spectacle of the piece.

Producers in 1943 reportedly worried that the play would be inappropriately funny to contemporary audiences, but, 80 years on, shocked laughter feels like its central currency. As with many of Christie’s stage mysteries, the opening introductions border on ridiculous, with a new character entering only moments after the last one spoke their name. The actors subtly play this for laughs, acknowledging the humour in the repetition of ten different names to aid the audience’s memory. This mildly tongue-in-cheek aspect continues even when the murders begin, producing an almost farcical element to the drama that lends itself incredibly well to the stage, where the audience has the freedom to scan the space for clues even while a certain conversation vies for their attention — on several occasions, nervous chuckles and gasps from the audience even preempt the characters’ discovery of a new murder. The exponentially more chaotic moments wrought by each sequential death arguably make the play more entertaining, not less.

The drama is aided by Mike Britton’s dark and ominous set, an unhomely mansion interior with a non-naturalistic twist which blends different spaces together — here a ghostly gauze separates two rooms, there an exposed sandbank encroaches unsettlingly onto the dining area. The gauze itself, however, isn’t always as ethereal as likely intended, which comes down partly to the lighting design, which often reveals too much upstage and, counterintuitively, leaves speaking characters in darkness as they wander to the edges of the stage. It is a welcome change when the gauze is stripped back and the set begins to reflect the group’s descent into paranoid hysteria — a fallen chandelier seems as conspicuous in its destined usage as Chekhov’s gun.

The lifeblood of this play is, of course, its characters, and the actors capture each of them in all their vibrant, hammy colour. The chemistry between Lombard (Joseph Beattie) and Vera (Sophie Walter) is compelling enough to get us on board with their relationship, and Beattie in particular captures Lombard’s frequently enraging charisma very naturally. David Yelland is especially impressive as the shrewd Judge Wargrave, speaking with the casual assuredness of a man used to taking charge of a room and an authenticity that manages to cut through the corniness of the other performances. It is this melodrama, however, that makes the play so watchable in the first place.

Aside from an innocuous instance of gender-swapping that neither makes a statement nor feels shoe-horned, the production remains mostly faithful to the original text, leaving little room for any truly revolutionary theatrical choices. That said, it achieves what it sets out to do: it is tense, cathartic and, in an appropriately pulpy sort of way, entertaining.

Runs until 21 October 2023.