The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
It’s no mystery
Great Lakes Theater has fallen in love with Agatha Christie plays in part because audience just crave a good whodunit
More than four decades have passed since Agatha Christie died. And yet the “Queen of Mystery,” whose total book sales are said to fall behind only the Bible and the works of William Shakespeare, remains as popular as ever.
Not only was a new film version of “Murder on the Orient Express” released in 2017, but there’s also a popular video game series carrying her name. Locally, Great Lakes Theater continues to return to her classic catalog, a trend started with the 2012 production of “The Mousetrap,” followed by 2016’s “And Then There Were None.”
Now the company is producing “Witness for the Prosecution” Feb. 15 through March 10 in Playhouse Square’s Hanna Theatre.
“I’ve always wanted to do ‘Witness for the Prosecution,’ but I have to say, a year and a half ago when I was setting the season, I was particularly drawn to the fact that we happened to be living in a moment in which courtroom dramas seem to kind of be right in the foreground of all of our experiences,” said Charles Fee, Great Lakes Theater producing artistic director, who is directing the production.
“So coming to ‘Witness for the Prosecution’ is kind of a great joy because of Christie’s amazing ability to draw us into a crime play and mystery that we are just desperate to solve. It’s a search for the truth, of course, as any courtroom drama is fundamentally.”
First appearing as a story titled “Traitor’s Hands” in a pulp magazine, “Witness for the Prosecution” was later published as part of Christie’s “The Hound of Death,” before being adapted into a play by the author in 1953. Movie lovers will remember the classic 1957 adaptation featuring Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich and Charles Laughton.
A classic courtroom thriller, “Witness for the Prosecution” revolves around Leonard Vole, accused of murdering a widow to inherit her wealth. What follows is shocking courtroom testimony and impassioned gallery outbursts as the defendant and his lawyers attempt to find the truth while his life hangs in the balance.
For the better part of the last decade, Great Lakes Theater discovered not only that the murdermystery genre was inherently classical in structure, which plays nicely with the company’s Shakespearean focus, but also — and perhaps more importantly — that theatergoers today enjoy putting on their sleuth caps and figuring out whodunit.
“It’s also the same reason why audiences love crime and detective stories because they read them, watch them and are put in the position of a quest for the truth as well,” Fee said. “It’s the active involvement of the audience.”
That interaction is amped up in “Witness for the Prosecution,” with 24 seats up set up on stage. One half finds audience members playing 12 members of the jury; the other side features 12 theatergoers acting as witnesses.
“We’ve found audiences love the direct involvement, while as a company we’re intrigued by the plays,” Fee said. “So together, we just continue to explore murder mysteries.”