DEATH ON THE NILE
Photos: Manuel Harlan
What a total delight it is to once more see a production of an Agatha Christie adapted for the stage by Ken Ludwig and directed by Lucy Bailey. Endless generations have and no doubt future ones will now enjoy the Christie murder mysteries. I know as a teenager I did, and with the passage of time most of the plots and denouements have been erased from my memory, despite the best, and worst, efforts of many film and TV makers.
Ludwig and Bailey simply get it right and after the successes of both And Then There Were None and Murder On The Orient Express expectations for this latest production were very high. We need not have worried, from the very start this was theatre of the very highest order. Mike Britton’s set is a work of genius, the complex locations deftly handled by employing louvred screens, perfect period furnishings and props and a raised gantry. From row E in the stalls it did result in a crick in the neck but a small price to pay for such a clever use of the space. Add to this brilliant lighting of Oliver Fenwick who managed to create the foggy gloom of a London street and then the blistering heat of The Nile with such impact. Mic Pool’s soundscape completed the whole and transported us to the place whilst never once intruding.
Ludwig’s script is witty, it sticks closely but never religiously to the original, and has some delightful contemporary asides that bring moments of delicious lightness to the evening. Lucy Bailey directs with clarity, yes the cast are given leave to employ the clipped tones of the period but never at the expense of drifting into camp parody. And whilst Britton’s set is wonderfully simplistic in one sense, his costumes are the absolute opposite, lavish confections that shine against the dark wooden slats of the steamer, the women all but one, glamorous and the men all struggling with the heat in multiple layers of linens and tweeds.
And all this before even a mention of the cast. Mark Hadfield make a fine Poirot, a little more amused and amusing than previous incarnations maybe but no less effective. Bob Barret’s Colonel Race is once again a real delight, part bumbling buffoon and yet totally believable as an MI5 agent.
Glynis Barber’s Salome Otterbourne is hysterically outrageous as she seeks to seduce Septimus Troy and in that role Terence Wilton gives a fine rendition of a totally over the top and past his prime Actor with a capital A. An excellent comedy pairing indeed.
Camilla Anvar is charmingly gauche as the mothered and smothered Rosalie Otterbourne and hilariously funny whilst trying to eventually seduce the shy doctor Ramses Praed, played with great reserve by Nicholas Prasad. His father, the Egyptologist Atticus displays every trait of the obsessed academic, barely intouch with the twentieth century let alone his son.
Helen Katamba’s Annabelle Pennington is a bluster of wickedness thinly veiled as friendship and kindness as she attempts to manipulate the heroine, I use the word loosely, and as such puts herself firmly in the frame as the murderer. But she is not alone, nearly every one has an axe to grind.
At the heart of the whole we have the three young lovers, jilted Jacqueline de Bellefort is superbly brittle as the crossed lover, angry and vengeful, darkly sinister and clearly in the frame. Her suitor Simon Doyle is played by Nye Occomore with a cool charm, a fine foil to some of the more flamboyant characters.
Libby Alexander-Cooper is divine, in every sense, as the rich, privileged and glamorous Linnet Ridgeway, sweeping across the stage imperiously in gown after gown and utterly believable as the focus of every man she encounters.
For years and years Christie was staged as simply camp period nonsense, and in doing so was becoming stale and irrelevant. Ludwig and Bailey have turned this on its head and reinvented Christie for a modern audience, and the massive and positive response was testament to the success of this. What next? Bring it on!
Andrew Kay
31 March
Theatre Royal Brighton
Rating:
