Brighton Fringe 2026

Murder, Margaret and Me

New Venture Theatre, Brighton

Genre: Adaptation, Comedic, Costume, Dark Comedy, Drama, Feminist Theatre, Theatre

Venue: New Venture Theatre Upstairs

Festival: Brighton Fringe, Brighton Year-Round

Low Down

Review

How can you sleuth out a mystery? By divulging the truth of your own, which made world headlines and yet is unsolved? Maybe. Philip Meeks developed his 2012 one-woman Edinburgh Fringe work to a three-hander in 2014. And now, Murder, Margaret and Me directed by Bryony Weaver has been adapted by her with an additional cast of six. It plays at New Venture’s Upstairs Theatre till May 23.

It’s a show about two remarkable woman – Agatha Christie and actor Margert Rutherford – and an unlikely friendship. Rutherford never read Christie; Christie didn’t think Rutherford at all suitable to play her beloved Miss Marple on screen. But it’s 1960. Christie’s had to sell the rights of some of her Miss Marple novels for tax reasons: and now MGM want to maul them. They’ve chosen Rutherford and Christie investigates. Fiercely.

Janice Jones playing the Spinster (effectively Miss Marple), Pearl from the publisher’s typing pool and Christie’s shadowy Secretary, has in a sense the most difficult role. Both facilitator (and bearing verbal lashes from Christie) yet also invisible, she’s both present and not. Jones, a regular in some very fine NVT productions over the years, relishes the steely Spinster role; the brief contrast with the garrulous Pearl, and as Secretary is both butt and plotter. Jones is here narrator and arbiter too: she pronounces like an implacable village Norm, unskeining the fates of the other two.

Agatha Christie (Sharon Drain), is here all velvet and old arsenic. Early on she divulges – to herself – her murderous feelings when her beloved and overshadowed Archie leaves her for another woman: one who threatens him less. Her retention all her life of his surname in a sense obliterates him. Drain’s much in demand professionally now. It’s a joy to see her return as someone strikingly different from so many roles she’s portrayed working with Sam Chittenden amongst others. Drain gradually opens up Christie from the sly yet elegant dissector to someone vulnerable; with a passion for both truth, and the beating heart behind it. There’s silver in her delivery.

Margaret Rutherford (Denise Evans) is more florid, yet more unknowable. Evans after a long professional career made a huge impression here last year with the short play The Pen of My Aunt. Here she provides a masterclass in the slow stripping-away of the ebullient and self-deprecating Rutherford with her carapace: a touchingly absurd family of stuffed animals. Behind this lies terror and devastating secrets that would end her career were they known. Evans can radiate waves of bluffness and humour, learn the twist, and yet the climax when it comes is overwhelming. I’ve rarely encountered such acting here as when Evans breaks out and down, and Drain reaches out.

Many of the play’s words are delivered in monologues or asides, a bit like Bryony Lavery’s Frozen or even Brian Friel’s Faith Healer. They’re more fluid though, and dialogue often enfilades the monologue. It’s an innovative, unpredictable play where the structural relations between protagonists dissolve and reform.

Weaver has designed the set too, a large room bifuracted with Christie’s office downstage-right and opposite the cosy drawing-room of Rutherford, with books (none of them Christie’s). The period furniture and realism gives way upstage, as a film set with occasional cameras and boom equipment flit across. Strat Mastoris’ lighting pinpoints the difference between domestic and film studio glare. Ian Black’s sound is perfectly cued for blasts of pop and the old TV and big-screen themes of Christie films.

This is where preset scenes are added. With new dialogue to lead into (and out of) the play’s three-hander. The additional film-crew characters are excellent and an attractive addition, if necessarily underused and possibly diffusing the original tension. But they do add the world and one warms to it: the last scene is a wrap. Admittedly though the slowish pace of Meeks’ play, already quite stretched at two-and-a-half hours with interval, distends a little in the first act. The second act though accelerates and is riveting. Rob Shepherd’s the older director with the final word, Guy Dixon the young man who teaches everyone to twist; and flirts with Rutherford till she flirts back. Laura Scobie and Sarah Donnelly on costumes, with Linda Rothwell and Carol Croft as crew, complete a talented cast you wish might speak more: but then that would be a different play.

As a dissection of a friendship Meeks didn’t know actually existed, it’s remarkable. Meeks on finding it truly did, was able to expand his play and the results are fascinating. It’s still a drama that settles oddly. And it’s hugely to the credit of Lavery and her team, with the NVT, that this singular play has been mounted. Brave, bold and really worth seeing above much else: even in a busy Festival.

Production Manager Ulrike Schilling, Production Assistant Ben Pritchard, Stage Manager Katie Brownings, ASMs Anne-Marie Harrison, Ayshen Irfan, Natalie Sax-Hammond.

Costume Design Mary Weaver, Marion Dean,

Costume assistant Botond Svilvagyi, Costume Makers Jackie Jones, Margaret Parkes

Hair & Make-Up Richard Blennerhassett

Set Design Bryony Weaver, Set Build & Painting Simon Glazier, Ally McDermott, Wiktoria Piatowska, Yago Bracalentti, Chris Tew,

Lighting Designer Strat Mastoris, Lighting Rigging Chris Dent, Elizabeth Acedo Polo & Liam O’Sullivan

Sound Designer Ian Black, Sound Operator Ian Black, Properties Carrie Hynds

Poster Designer Tamsin Mastoris

Programme Designer Ian Amos

Publicity/Headshot Photography Strat Mastoris

Publicity& Social Media Elysa Hyde

Health and Safety Ian Black.

Thanks to Rod Lewis, Mark Wilson, Jackie Jones for the Rutherford Cloak, Shuna Neilson, production and backstage team,  And FOH.

Published May 16, 2026 by Simon Jenner