M’lud, Agatha Christie has clearly dunnit again
Witness for the Prosecution
County Hall
Agatha Christie is back in London. Of course, technically she has never been away. The Mousetrap continues to snare ’em and slay ’em at St Martin’s: the world’s longest-running play hits its 65th anniversary next month, coinciding with the cinema release of Kenneth Branagh’s new Murder on the Orient Express.
But the unveiling of a plush, West End-standard revival of her courtroom thriller Witness for the Prosecution in the grand council chamber at County Hall marks the first big London production of a Christie play since 2005, when Shaftesbury Avenue played host to a revised version of And Then There Were None.
The bulk of the action takes place at the Old Bailey – where meek, mild, nervy and shifty Leonard Vole stands accused of killing a wealthy elderly woman whom he casually befriended, his only alibi his German wife Romaine, who viciously turns the tables when called to the witness stand.
It’s hard to think of a more suitable setting (in a nice twist, the director is one Lucy Bailey, to the manor nominally born you might say). We’re treated to a palatial interior fit for the queen of crime – old-world Twenties opulence from the minute we walk in, sweep up the stairs and take our pew amid imposing rows of leather seating. And as we bear down on proceedings just as a replica of the Old Bailey’s statue of justice does, it feels as though we too are enlisted in arriving at a verdict (though for a fee, you can book to sit in the “jury box”).
Where once Ken Livingstone and fellow Glc-ers jaw-jawed (the chamber is so mustily atmospheric, we’re literally inhaling history) we can now chew over the evidence and confront a nightmare which – despite the abolition of capital punishment (a factor that raises the stakes in the play) – stalks us all. It’s a nightmare that’s nicely stoked here with flourishes of intimidating officialdom: stern bobbies standing guard, echoing voices summoning the witnesses, guillotine-sharp lighting cues. And it is: what if we were accused of a crime but had little concrete means of proving our innocence?
Although derided as the last word in fuddy - duddyness, Christie retains a capacity to entertain, amuse and, crucially, unsettle. Witness blasts cosy assumptions about whether we can trust those closest to us. Jack Mcmullen and Catherine Steadman as the principals keep us guessing right up to the notorious slipknot ending. There’s some splendidly fierce cross-examination along the way from Philip Franks and David Yelland, both seeming to have spent their lives greying in chambers.
It’s not the perfect murder-mystery – but thanks to fiendishly canny producing, the place as much as the melodramatic play’s the thing. Though I imagine some would wish me hanged for crimes of incorrect language, I’d suggest that the old girl has dunnit again.