Definitely see this show. It’s a joy. Rarely has murder been such fun. It opens at a café in Istanbul where our passengers are waiting for the train. We see little wooden tables set for two with white table cloths and matching wooden chairs. We are in 1934.
Hercule Poirot, played magnificently by Michael Maloney – describes the establishment’s ambience: “The enormity of the prices is equalled only by the self-esteem of the waiters.”
Maloney is as good a Poirot as you will see, with perfect comic timing, immaculate delivery, and great aplomb.
And he is matched by extremely polished performances by everyone else in the cast.
They are all superb but Mila Carter as the dignified Hungarian Countess Elena Andrenyi and Christine Kavanagh as the brassy American Helen Hubbard get the chance with dramatic interludes to make most of a superb script by Ken Ludwig, who has adapted Agatha Christie’s famous whodunit for the stage.
The staging and the set are ingenious. Mike Britton’s design has a steam train with old style carriages and a corridor running along the separate compartments.
The compartments come together, move apart, and revolve so at one time they are sleeping rooms, at another a dining room, and even little spaces which represent the train conductor’s office.
SLICED UP IN BED – A BLOODY CORPSE INDEED
One of the travellers, Samuel Ratchett, (played by Simon Cotton) is an obnoxious character, a brute and a bully in a big hat and a fur coat and we aren’t really sorry when we find him sliced up in his bed with several wounds – a bloody corpse indeed.
Who can have done this terrible deed – and why?
At least two of the women say they have seen a mystery man seen going in and out of the compartments. Who is he? How come the entire train has been searched without finding him?
Poirot takes the rest of the play to solve the mystery. He says the murderer must be someone still on the train -which by now is stuck in a snowdrift -– but which one of them is it?
It turns out that there is no shortage of motives and no shortage of suspects. Are the meek ones the personalities they seem?
How many of these people are lying to him about who they really are?
This show is beautifully choreographed, the timing is precision. It’s laced with humour but none of the characters is a cardboard parody.
GRIPPING FROM START TO FINISH
Each of them has enough depth to draw you into the world that between them they create. Directed by Lucy Bailey, this is a really fast-paced show, gripping from start to finish.
There have several films made of Murder on the Orient Express. You may think you’ve seen it, and you know the end and that’s that.
I thought this version was cleverer than any of the movies.
Sometimes there really is nothing more delightful than a live show and the first night audience at Cambridge Arts Theatre absolutely loved this one.
Murder on The Orient Express is at Cambridge Arts Theatre until Saturday, November 2 then touring into next year.
