ABOUT THE PLAY

Agatha Christie is best known for her eighty volumes of novels and short stories, but in her lifetime she said, “I find that writing plays is much more fun than writing books.” Ten Little Indians, Witness for the Prosecution, and the all-time world-record holder for continuous performances, The Mousetrap (now in its 55th season in London), are her most popular dramas.

Murder mysteries have been on stage since the time of the ancient Greeks–what else is Oedipus Rex but a search for the killer of Oedipus’s father? The irony, of course, is that the detective is also the killer-Oedipus himself. Our play tonight is similar to this classic in that we know who’s dead and how he died, but we don’t know “whodunit?” Our play also has many of the expected elements of the genre of which Christie is the exemplar: lots of suspects, beleaguered policemen, a touch of romance, quirky humor, and more than a few plot twists and turns.

But why are these stories-on the page or the stage or the screen, large or small-so popular still? As one of the characters in tonight’s play puts it, “I’ve always had a secret longing to see how I could get on with a detective story in real life. That’s it, isn’t it? Each of us, at one time or another, has read something in the paper or heard something on TV and wondered could I figure out who did it? So, join in now and see if you can solve the puzzle before Dame Agatha reveals the truth-or does she?

Tom McClary