The original 1978 film of Agatha Christie’s Death of the Nile is a favourite of mine, featuring my idea of the perfect Poirot in the form of the great Peter Usinov. It also had a stellar cast, with David Niven, Maggie Smith, Angela Lansbury, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Angela Lansbury, Jane Birkin and other notable names, including Celia Imrie who was not credited. The perfect Sunday afternoon tonic.
So I was keen to see the stage adaptation, which is playing at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford this week until Saturday. I’m so glad I did, because it was brilliant.
Christie wrote the book in 1936 and it was published in 1937 and she adapted it for the stage as Murder on the Nile. This adaptation is by Ken Ludwig, one of the most performed playwrights of his generation, cleverly directed by Lucy Bailey, and it really works well.
It opens with a short, plump man with a moustache, our first meeting of Hercule Poirot who pleasingly looks like a slimmer Peter Usinov and maintains a faultlessly Belgian accent throughout. Delightfully played by Mark Hadfield, he keeps the play moving along at a good, fast and enjoyable pace. We also meet the lovers in the form of Jaqueline de Belfort (Esme Hough) and Simon Doyle (Nye Occomore) who can’t keep their hands of one another.
Moving on to a reception at the British Museum to bid farewell to a sarcophagus that is being returned on board ship to Egypt, we meet the rest of the cast, all of whom are set to join said ship. Everyone is well cast and play their party perfectly. Glynis Barber, to my generation Makepeace from Dempsey & Makepeace, is a delightful Salome Otterbourne who flirts deliciously with ‘famous actor’ Septimus Troy (Terence Wilton), who laments beautifully his fall from great Shakespearean actor to having to work in a Western as Wyatt Earp.
Bob Barret is a good Colonel Race, Poirot’s friend and retired MI5 officer who is on the scent of fraud and has some good set pieces with Poirot, but the standout for me was Libby Alexander-Cooper, who plays heiress Linnet Ridgeway beautifully in what is her professional theatre debut.
Another standout was the staging. Very cleverly done, it functions as many different spaces and really does offer the feeling of the deck and inside of a ship, great lighting really adding to its success. The 1920s setting allows for some great classy period clothing which adds to the spectacle.
The script adds many moments of levity and laugh-out-loud set pieces, which cleverly livens everything up and turns this ‘whodunnit’ into the joyous play it is. I loved it, a solid five stars from me for one of the most enjoyable things I have seen on stage for a good while.
Death on the Nile is at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford until Saturday 17th January and then touring. It will be on in Chichester 27th-31st January.
