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A thriller with a deadly twist Who killed “Agatha” Christie? Wolverhampton Grand
WHEN a vitriolic critic finds himself
trapped in a flat with a playwright he has much maligned over the years
he has probably worked out that he is not in for an easy ride. But Arthur "Agatha" Christie would hardly be
expecting the threat of murder to hang so heavily in the air
particularly as the writer he has so unmercifully pilloried, John Terry,
seems so mild mannered, if a little adrift from being described as sane. That is the scenario Tudor Gates sets for the
audience in his clever thriller. With just two actors and only one scene
it needs something special to grip an audience for an hour and a half
but Neil Roberts as the upper-class, gay critic Arthur Christie and
Stephen Rashbrook as the homicidal and frighteningly sane writer John
Terry manage it in some style. The performance itself is an impressive feat of
memory with so many lines to learn but not once did we have a stumble,
pause or hesitation , as they would say in Just a Minute. The dialogue was crisp and like a game of verbal
ping pong as the two men spar their way through the ingenious plot. We
even have regular laughs, usually at Christie’s expense, as Terry enjoys
turning the tables on the critic who has now become his quarry.
We see the harmless, slightly weird Terry grow
into a scheming killer bent on revenge while the initially arrogant,
confident Christie is reduced to a gibbering wreck. There is no shouting or histrionics as Terry
turns from writer to murderer, just words which, for Christie, who
prided himself on his use of language and clever turn of phrase, must
have made it even more frightening as complaints about his critiques
turned to threats on his life by just a turn of phrase. Christie has been lured to the flat by the
promise of information and evidence about the infidelity of his lover and
finds himself as the unwilling accomplice in a double murder only to
find a double killing is to become a triple homicide with himself as the
final victim. Not only that but he has even unwittingly taken
steps to provide an alibi for Terry and to assist in covering up his own
death. But as in any good thriller nothing is quite as
it seems and we even have a twist at the end in the very final line in
what is a well written and finely structured play. This is the third in the four-play Ian Dickens’s
season which is ends with a new adaptation of Wilkie Collins’ A Woman in
White next week. To Saturday, July 16. Roger Clarke
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