Verdict on this classic Christie? Criminally good
KEN Livingstone’s old power base, London’s County Hall, probably saw some skulduggery in its time but nothing quite as bad as the murder of Emily French, a rich spinster whose demise is at the starting point for Agatha Christie’s legal drama Witness For The Prosecution. County Hall’s high- domed Council Chamber, with its marble plaques, noble columns and semi- circle of members’ seating, has been turned into the courthouse for an enthralling Lucy Bailey revival of this 1953 play.
The setting is an event all in itself. Why on earth has it not been used more often before for public entertainment? The last thing I came to here was the launch of Boris Johnson’s London mayoralty campaign years ago. High comedy, that was.
But Witness For The Prosecution is classic Christie, done here with almost complete authenticity. The lawyers are white chaps ( you could almost call them ‘cheps’) and the suspect is a runty Londoner called Leonard Vole (Jack McMullen, excellent).
When women look at the penurious Vole they want to mother him. Miss French certainly fell for him, and left him a fortune in her will shortly before she was murdered.
The show opens with Vole envisaging Mr Justice Wainwright placing the black cap on his head to pronounce a death sentence, and a gallows ingeniously springing from the floor, its noose swinging in bright light, centre stage.
Judge Wainwright is played by Patrick Godfrey, perfect as the sort of old sot who used to lead our judiciary (they tend to disguise their snootishness a little more cunningly these days). He sits high and grand in the County Hall chairman’s seat, his elderly face lit starkly from below like some ghastly masque.
The audience is drawn into the drama. ‘ Enjoy the trial,’ said an usher as I took my seat. Audience members sit on the jury benches. Director Bailey – ‘ Old Bailey’ we must not call her – uses sound subtly to create the reactions of people in the court’s public gallery. When witnesses are called to give evidence, their names are barked out by doorkeepers in the chamber. We leave the court a couple of times to visit the offices of Sir Wilfrid Robarts QC, utterly pukka, a man who believes implacably that British justice is the best in the world. David Yelland plays him brilliantly and is well matched by Philip Franks as counsel for the prosecution.
The case against Vole seems hopeless, even though it all seems so blazingly unfair. If only he had not married that sultry German wife of his (Catherine Steadman).
As the plot twists, making fools of our conceptions, you suspect that the ostensibly respectable Dame Agatha must have had her devilish side. These stalwart barristers with their clipped vowels and belief in patriotic truth-telling were her very sorts, were they not? Or did she consider them blithering fools?
Great setting, memorable staging, pacy acting. The queen of cunning has been brilliantly served.