The Mountbatten Theatre
on3rd to 7th December 1985
Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the ‘Queen of Crime’. Her seventy-seven detective novels have been translated into no less than one hundred and three languages and her sales are calculated in hundreds of millions.
She began writing at the end of the First World War when she created, in Hercule Poirot, the most popular sleuth in fiction since Sherlock Holmes.
Theatregoers have proved just as eager as the reading public to match wits with Mrs Christie. The first of her many stage whodunnits was Alibi in 1928 and for the next fifty years adaptations, original plays and revivals kept the Christie name in lights. In 1953 she had three productions The Mousetrap, Witness for the Prosecution and Spider’s Web all running in London’s West End at the same time. After thirty-three years, The Mousetrap is still playing to packed houses and making theatrical history.
Murder on the Nile is one of Mrs Christie’s earlier plays, originally entitled Murder under the Moon. In 1956, in response to public demand for more novels featuring Hercule Poirot, she adapted the stage play into a novel under the title of Death on the Nile, re-working the plot to include the “little Belgian detective”. It was this version which was later further adapted into the film of the same name. The film was completed after Agatha Christie’s death in 1976.
Postscript
Agatha Christie’s own life had one episode which might have been drawn from her own devious imagination when, in December 1926, she mysteriously vanished. Missing for ten days, she turned up at a health resort suffering from ‘amnesia’ and registered under the name of her husband’s mistress. Her disappearance has never been satisfactorily explained.
| Cast (in order of appearance) | |
| 1st Beadseller | David Bartlett |
| 2nd Beadseller | Adrian Clark |
| Steward | Alan Watson |
| Miss Ffoliot-Ffoulkes | Mollie Manns |
| Christina Grant | Jan Ward |
| Smith | Malcolm Douglas |
| Louise | Hazel Burrows |
| Dr. Bessner | Harry Tuffill |
| Kay Mostyn | Lynda Edwards |
| Simon Mostyn | Chris Williams |
| Canon Pennefather | David Pike |
| JacqueLine De Severac | Belinda White |
| McNaught | David Bartlett |
| For the Maskers: | |
| Director | Pete White |
| Designer | Graham Hill |
| Stage Manager | Joy Wingfield |
| Assistant Stage Manager | Keith Hooper |
| Lighting | Sue Gunningham, Clive Weeks |
| Sound | Lawrie Gee |
| Costumes Designed and Created by | Janet Cairney |
| Properties | Janine Groombridge, Angela Barks |
| Set Construction | Roger Lockett, John Riggs, Mike Johnson, Dave Allen |
| Special Effects | Tony Lawther |
| Hair by | Robbie Manns |
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