Brighton Year-Round 2024

And Then There Were None

Fiery Angel, Royal & Derngate, Northampton and Royo

Genre: Adaptation, Drama, Mainstream Theatre, Theatre

Venue: Theatre Royal, Brighton

Festival: Brighton Year-Round

Low Down

Review

Four titles, three still repeatable and two very different endings Agatha Christie wrote herself. That’s when she adapted her 1939 novel as And Then There Were None for the stage in 1943, now arriving at Theatre Royal, Brighton. Director Lucy Bailey almost crafts a third for this Royal & Derngate tour whilst heightening one of Christie’s versions.

It’s what you’d expect from Bailey, whose cracking take on this chiller delves into all the detail and distress she brought to her outstanding Much Ado at the Globe in 2022. There the emotional consequences on Beatrice of “Kill Claudio” shudder into the most profound understanding of what she’s unleashed. In this Christie, too, that sense attends the central character Vera Claythorne (Sophie Walter) in choices she makes.

Walter’s poise, distress and evoking Vera’s dawning realisations rivet our attention and indeed there’s not a cough as we fix on the ten characters arriving at Mike Britton’s plush Deco-esque home with a scuffed gleaming floor and Deco features. It’s curtained around with a revolving diaphanous curtain, a kind of sand ribbed-jetty and an interior that’s open to the winds.

It’s an active, vibrant set referencing film-noir in colour with a nod to period surrealism. The sky lowers all around sitting on judgement; and Chris Davey’s lighting (notable in Twelve Angry Men here in November) here plays on storm-light, halo’d clouds, sunsets and bright, pitiless mornings.

There’s some curious side-lighting and one red-lit moment of wild dancing – the only odd note in Bailey’s inexorable reading. Elizabeth Purnell’s music rubs salt into the nerves as it pitches contemporary and forties menace.

All invited by apparent friends, the ten guests who mainly know nothing of each other, are deposited by truculent boatman Fred Narracott (Matt Weyland) who vanishes to the mainland. Alarm follows confusions with a record the absent U N Owen has instructed servant Georgina Rogers (Lucy Tregear, wary, deadpan with a simmering fear) to play.

It promptly accuses them all of different murders or manslaughters; it reminds them of the rhyme Ten Little Soldiers. Rogers and her partner Jane Pinchbeck (a vibrant Nicola May-Taylor) in a sexily neat update, Vera herself, Bible-righteous Emily Brent (Katy Stephens stiff with hate cosplaying virtue), sportscar-wielding Anthony Marston (Oliver Clayton, dashingly heedless), General Mackenzie (Jeffery Kissoon, visibly summoned by guilt), William Blore aka Mr Davis (Andrew Lancel, chipper rough-justice ex-detective), Doctor Armstrong (Rob Barnett, haunted by reason and remorse), Philip Lombard (Joseph Beattie, refreshing in his frank clear-eyed admission from the start), and Judge Wargrave (David Yelland, the voice of the just in Yelland’s darkly thrilling voice).

Some actors inevitably get more of a chance to make an impression, but all are excellent. Yelland and Walter with Beattie might have most to do, but others like Barrett and Lancel aren’t far behind. The response of each to their accusation defines them, as apart from the open-handed Lombard, everyone faces a moment of truth.

Royal & Derngate have assembled a first-rate creative team too, and shout-out for movement director Ayse Tashkiran, and fight director Renny Krupinski who meld actors to a noir ballet in the almost spectral island light, playing out one of Christie’s choices.

To say more of the plot would be a hanging offence. This is the finest Christie production I can remember. If you’re not a Christie fan, do see this anyway: it’s far more than a whodunnit. Can attraction win out over the masterly way each character forms fragile alliances, splintering discords, diminishing returns on guesses? The ending’s fresh, shuddering a frisson of consummation.

Published January 10, 2024 by Simon Jenner