Agatha Christie’s A Murder Is Announced comes to the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds courtesy of the Irving Stage Company
On a quiet Friday morning in the tranquil village of Chipping Cleghorn, the weekly local newspaper drops through letterboxes. In the Gazette’s small ads, the scandalised residents read: A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October the 13th, at Little Paddocks at 6.30pm. Friends please accept this, the only intimation.
So begins one of Agatha Christie’s best-loved murder mysteries, A Murder is Announced, featuring spinster sleuth Miss Jane Marple, and brought to the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds stage this month by the Irving Stage Company.
Director Ash Seaborne said: “The play is set in the 1950s in this quintessential village where everyone appears to be eminently respectable. As the plot develops, long-hidden secrets are revealed and it becomes clear that people may not be what they seem.
“Christie knew that before the war, village populations stayed the same for decades and everyone knew everyone else. That all changed in the 1950s, and as our Inspector Craddock (Mark Blackwell) observes, most of the protagonists have only been in Chipping Cleghorn for a short time.
“Little Paddocks is a genteel Victorian house presided over by Miss Letitia Blacklock. Under her roof she has three young lodgers, a scatty old schoolfriend and an eccentric Eastern European cook. All these people, as well as nosy neighbours, are there to witness the “murder”, convinced it’s a prank. Sure enough, the lights go out on cue – and when they come on again, it’s obvious this is no joke.”
Ash added: “As with all Christie mysteries there are plenty of blind alleys and red herrings to keep the Marple (Alice Robertson), with her fearsome logic and forensic mind, to help unmask the guilty.”
Irving’s Artistic Director Siân Couture, who plays Miss Blacklock, chatelaine of Little Paddocks, said: “The joy of appearing in an Agatha Christie mystery is that she creates such great characters to portray. She sets the scene so well, audiences recognise where and when they are, creating a familiar – almost comfortable – world, where suddenly things happen that turn that world upside down.”
Ash is an experienced director and actor, but with this production he is making his directorial debut with Irving, having appeared in a number of roles with the company at the Theatre Royal. “This is such a special theatre,” he said. “Irving has a shared history here for more than six decades, and we are all very excited to share this classic Christie with our audiences.”
Irving is back at the theatre on Sunday, June 1 at 7pm with A Musical Celebration, a programme of song and dance from Broadway and West End favourites, and some beautiful classical music as well. Then in November, the company will present Spamalot – “lovingly ripped off” from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
By Christian Jenner
For tickets, see theatreroyal.org
