Writer: Agatha Christie
Adapted for the stage by: Ken Ludwig
Director: Lucy Bailey
Our murder mystery evening gets off to a playful start during the safety speech when the suspiciously French accented voice of our house manager warns us to sit back and have a good time, for “if we do not”, we “may be prosecuted”. Agatha Christie’s 1937 suspenseful play is clearly at home in the luxurious surroundings of Dublin’s Victorian Gaiety Theatre with its luxurious red velvet seating, gilt-edged moulding, chandeliers and cherubs.
Mark Hadfield heads a first-rate cast as fiction’s beloved Belgian sleuth, Hercule Poirot, investigating the killing of wealthy newlywed, Linnet Ridgeway during her honeymoon aboard a grand Nile cruise ship, the ‘Karnak’, “by far the most admired in all of Egypt”. Libby Alexandra-Cooper is superb as the beautiful, young heiress who has stolen her friend Jacqueline De Bellefort’s fiancé, Simon Doyle, after their ‘coup de foudre’. Who on the passenger manifest is responsible for the dastardly deed?
Under Lucy Bailey’s direction, an ensemble of 12 delivers a flawless performance of Ken Ludwig’s fresh adaptation of this much loved classic. The show is reminiscent of early cinematic black and white movies in which the characters use exaggerated acting styles and dramatic sweeping gestures to create theatricality with great comic effect. Led by movement director Liam Steel, the cast hit their marks on stage throughout with military precision, crossing, blocking and like a corps de ballet, swaying as one.
Glynis Barber of Dempsey and Makepeace fame nails the part of the fabulously peacockish actress and novelist Salome Otterbourne. Her opposite, Terence Wilton, is a fine Septimus Troy, hiding his truculent bitterness as a fading star beneath an air of charming thespianism. Esme Hough is pristine in her depiction of the stalking, jilted infatuate, De Bellefort. The impoverished “cad” at the centre of the love triangle is energetically played by Nye Occomore. Poirot’s likeable sidekick, British MI5 agent Colonel Race, is portrayed by Holby City’s Bob Barrett (Dr Sacha Levy) who exhibits a commanding stage presence each time he appears.
Across the board, the whole of the troupe, including Camilla Anvar, David Boyle, Max Dinnen, Howard Gossington Helen Katamba, Nicholas Prasad and Nadia Shash, gives an excellent account of itself. And action is literally elevated by the boat itself. Mike Britton has designed the upper and lower deck of a luxurious boat with sliding sets of wooden slatted doors and balcony railings which can fly in and out of scenes revealing the inside of cabins, a breakfast room and a glamorous saloon. I imagine the props supervisor Sharon Foley is responsible for the marvellous sarcophagus which is being transported from the British museum back to Wadi Halfa in Egypt by the ship’s company.
Costume supervisor Sarah Holland and head of wardrobe Amanda Ozdonmez have dressed the ladies in a dazzling array of flapper style dresses, resplendent head pieces, gloves and fringed shawls while the men are presented in black evening attire, tan linen day suits, an occasional fez and spats. In the party scene Septimus is a sartorial wonder in a coat to rival Joseph’s amazing technicolour dreamcoat. Added to an atmospherically charged musical score, Oliver Fenwick and Melissa Ashley’s lighting team creates an entire spectrum of effects to include fog, fire, moonlight, rippling water and silhouette popping back lighting. Ken Ludwig’s adaptation and production of Death on the Nile is simply impeccable.
The final scene mirrors the first. A pair of lovers embracing on one side of the stage are flanked by Poirot on the other. Except in this last act the couple are celestial as is the tragic young woman looking on from above. Hadfield’s incarnation of Christie’s lovable hero as a droll, shimmying, cane carrying, moustache twirling, rotund wobbling, interested observer and narrator, is a delight. “It was a memorable trip!”.
Reviewed 21st April 2026.
