Skip to main content

And Then There Were None 

Dundee Rep
Three stars
There's a whiff of anarchy about Agatha Christie's much loved murder 
mystery yarn, revived here by Kenny Miller, who puts Christie's 
island-set affair in an impossibly chic drawing room complete with 
catwalk, bar and a rhinoceros skeleton on top. It's as if by putting 
ten thoroughly ghastly archetypes of her age in the same room and 
bumping them off one by one, she's attempting to wipe out an entire 
society. The fact that the opening scene where the ten strangers meet 
for the first time resembles something out of Big Brother makes 
Christie's righteous indignation at such a motley crew of boy racers, 
corrupt coppers, dried-out doctors, well-heeled fops and career girls 
on the make even more justified.

While none of this is pushed to the fore in an at times unintentionally 
funny rendition as Dundee Rep's ensemble cast navigate their way 
through Christie's cut-glass period demotic, it still simmers beneath 
the play's impeccable manners. With the story's original downbeat 
ending reinstated, there's a glorious lack of sentimentality on show as 
the body-count increases. This sets up a set of top turns, with Irene 
Macdougall and Ann Louise Ross relishing every second with their 
respective tight-lipped grotesques. While Robert Jack makes a dashingly 
slimy Lombard as Emily Winter's drop-dead Vera swishes and circles 
about him, it's Ian Grieve's bumbling greedy-guts, Blore, who seems to 
fully inhabit Christie's world.

Like any elite scrambling to survive, the second half has the play's 
final five turning on each other even as they huddle into the shadows 
for comfort. When the culprit is revealed as the ultimate vigilante, 
it's the coldest of finales in a play that takes no prisoners.


The Herald, March 11th 2014

ends
Labels:

Comments

Amit Agarwal said…
It was my first Agatha Christie novel. I was interested to order this book after reading the tag "over 100 million copied sold". Also, the plot which has 10 murders was definitely something which a mystery/detective lover like me would grab with both hands. And I must say, the plot is superb and the story proceeds at a fast pace and keeps you guessing. As the characters get murdered one by one, the suspicion towards the survivors keeps changing. Lovely read.
Now I know where "Gumnam" movie got its plot from.
13 May 2014 at 16:58
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Art School Dance Goes On Forever – Snapshots Of Masters Of The Multiverse

Intro – Snapshots – Deaf School

1

In 1980, the same year as the Manchester band, Magazine, released a 7
inch single called A Song From Under The Floorboards – a three verse
and chorus distillation of Dostoyevsky's novel, Notes From Underground
– an art school scandal occurred.

This scandal took place in Liverpool, and was based around a project
called the Furbelows, although it became better known in the Liverpool
Echo and other organs that reported it as the Woolly Nudes.

The Furbelows, or Woolly Nudes, were a group of artists who had come
out of Liverpool College of Art, who, dressed in grotesque woolly
costumes which featured knitted approximations of male and female
genitalia, made assorted public interventions around the city centre as
kind of living sculptures acting out assorted narratives.

The Furbelows project had been funded by what was then Merseyside Arts
Association, and, after the participants were arrested and taken to
court on obscenity charges after what…
Post a Comment
Read more

Peter Brook – The Prisoner

Peter Brook is no stranger to Scotland, ever since the guru of European and world theatre first brought his nine-hour epic, The Mahabharata, to Glasgow in 1988. That was at the city’s old transport museum, which by 1990 had become Tramway, the still-functioning permanent venue that opened up Glasgow and Scotland as a major channel for international theatre in a way that had previously only been on offer at Edinburgh International Festival.
Brook and his Paris-based Theatre des Bouffes du Nord company’s relationship with Tramway saw him bring his productions of La Tragedie de Carmen, La Tempete, Pellease et Mellisande, The Man Who…, and Oh Les Beaux Jours – the French version of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days – to Glasgow.
Thirty years on from The Mahabharata, Brook comes to EIF with another piece of pan-global theatre as part of a residency by Theatre des Bouffes du Nord, which Brook has led since he decamped to Paris from London in the early 1970s. The current Edinburgh residency has alr…
Post a Comment
Read more

Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare's Globe Comes to Glasgow

Open-air Shakepeares are a summer-time perennial of the theatre calendar, attracting picnicking audiences as much as midges. More often than not, such romps through the grass are frothy, heritage industry affairs designed to be accompanied by strawberries and cream and not to be taken too seriously. Shakespeare’s Globe theatre company look set to change such perceptions when they open their outdoor tour of Romeo And Juliet in Glasgow next week as part of the West End festival.

For the two young actors taking the title roles of the doomed lovers, it will also be something of a homecoming. Richard Madden and Ellie Piercy both studied in Glasgow prior to turning professional. Indeed, Madden has yet to graduate from the acting course at RSAMD, and, as well as facing the pressures of playing such a meaty role in close proximity to the audience, will have the added anxiety of being assessed and graded by his tutors.

“This is the end of my third year,” says Madden following a Saturday mornin…
Post a Comment
Read more