Is the famous genre of the whodunnit novel really fit to be adapted to the stage?

With a career spanning some fifty years, Agatha Christie remains one of the single most prolific authors in history. Therefore, the question on the mind of anyone bold enough to translate her work to another medium must be: what makes this riff on the Queen of Crime unique?

Certainly, this challenge was in the back of my own mind when, last week, I saw the latest take on perhaps Christie’s most famous story: Murder on the Orient Express. The story, of an unexpected murder on a snowbound train car, has this time been adapted for the stage by Ken Ludwig and directed by Lucy Bailey.

Such a drastic switch in mediums necessarily requires changes to the original book. Christie’s prose, though no doubt prone to archetypes and tropes (many of its own invention), is often subtle, with a quiet grace and efficiency befitting the aristocratic vistas it so frequently describes. By contrast, Bailey’s version is, in a word, big. It has the subtlety of, ironically, a freight train. To a point, this is necessary. Characters must convey who they are, or how they wish to be perceived, to an audience of hundreds, without the benefit of a few dozen paragraphs.

The character Ratchett exemplifies this. His description in the novel, that of an elderly man whose benevolent appearance is unable to disguise the darkness of his character, is ditched in favour of a performance marinating in gangster cliches right out of Guys and Dolls, which immediately communicates to the audience, in the absence of an omniscient narrator, that the man is bad news.

Michael Maloney’s portrayal of protagonist Hercule Poirot, the little Belgian detective famous all over the world for his little grey cells, is a standout. When it inevitably comes time for the suspects to be assembled and the detective to elucidate the mystery, Maloney pulls off the requisite monologue, replete with just the right kind of pomp and flourish and wit, with aplomb.

Other changes include some less integral characters being merged together, or excised entirely, for the sake of a tighter story. For example, the character of Doctor Constantine is gone, with his function being appended to one of the suspects, whose role in the book is perhaps smaller than their eventual importance to the solution would merit.

The show’s breakneck pace turned the central mystery from a compelling, methodical build to a frenetic countdown.

These decisions create small issues with which the more pedantic in the audience may take issue (i.e. why, for example, can we take points such as the time of death as factual, as the narrative clearly intends, when the person supplying them is themselves a suspect?) though, on balance, they are beneficial expediencies.

A highlight of the evening was the set, ingeniously designed by Mike Britton. The rotating train car, able to break into smaller sections, lent a kineticism and seamlessness to the production. As it stands, the show is suitably claustrophobic for its premise; intimate, but not cramped. As the story advanced, and Poirot drew closer to the truth, the set could open up to match.

That said, I left feeling that the show’s breakneck pace turned the central mystery from a compelling, methodical build, to a frenetic countdown to the, admittedly excellent, denouement. The particular loss of one small conversation, between Poirot and Princess Dragomiroff, feels especially unfortunate. In the play, the latter character is largely relegated to comic relief which, while entertaining, loses once again some of the subtle intellect of Christie’s original story. The play’s use of the overhead projector, frequently in an attempt to achieve the same aims, failed to match the sense of cold melancholy that Christie so deftly creates in a few paragraphs.

Upon its release, Orient was simply another in Agatha Christie’s ever expanding bibliography. Its popularity, however, turned what was once a Christie novel into the Christie novel. This has brought on another key change, that being in how Poirot himself reacts to the conclusion. To most subsequent interpreters of the book, it seems to stand to reason that Poirot’s definitive adventure cannot simply be the most compelling story in the canon of a character who remains largely unchanged. Rather, it must shake him to his very core.

The constant momentum of Ludwig’s treatment leaves any ethical query limited to the opening and closing monologues. In essence, it becomes less of a question for the characters and more one for the audience. As the set falls away, and Poirot, the last one on stage, takes a bow and becomes Michael Maloney once again, we are left wondering what we would have done in his position.

It’s here that I’m struck with another reason as to why, of all the multitudinous whodunnits starring the peculiar detective, this one has become definitive. Like all the others, it challenges the audience to solve the mystery, but afterwards it asks them what they ought to do with the answer. While this question is never made explicit in the original text itself, it is a testament to both the power of the story, and the innate potential of adaptations, that it continues to be asked all these years later. Murder on the Orient Express remains as relevant as ever, and this particular version, though a bumpy ride at points, is worth the ride.

Published 27 November 2024