Curtain Up (15 page)

Ivor Brown, writing in the
Observer
, commented, ‘The suitable play is scarce and one fortnight of poor houses will swiftly obliterate the small profit derivable from two or three of reasonably crowded attendance. The policy of the house seems to have been to give everything a turn and balance a few high-aspiring swings with the more ordinary jollity of the roundabouts. I suspect that the management attracts the critics rather than the public when it goes for the swings and has to pay for its receipts of complimentary writing by some bestowal of complimentary seats.'
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The Times
also lamented the Embassy's loss: ‘Valuable work in London has been done by the Embassy Company at Swiss Cottage, where under the skilful direction of A.R. Whatmore many plays . . . were performed in London for the first time. In its comparatively short life the company has created for itself a public which will learn with regret that the lease at the Embassy is not to be renewed and that the theatre is to become a cinema.'
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The rumours of the Embassy's change of use proved unfounded, however, and it soon reopened under Ronald Adam, who had been its business manager under Reandco. He turned it into a club theatre, thereby avoiding the need for the Lord Chamberlain's approval and facilitating a sometimes more radical programme of work. Andre van Gyseghem replaced A.R. Whatmore as the venue's artistic figurehead, directing a number of notable productions including two plays starring Paul Robeson. Adam ran the Embassy until 1939, and his business model appears to have been more robust than Rea's, with numerous plays going on to enjoy West End success.

Chimneys
, therefore, was to an extent a victim of the organised chaos of the repertory system, the very system that had given Christie her West End debut with
Black Coffee
. There was actually no mystery about its sudden disappearance from the schedule; she was clearly advised that it had been postponed, purportedly to enable rewrites, and the management that had optioned it then ceased their involvement with the theatre that was to have presented it shortly before the rescheduled dates. The truth is, however, that had Rea been particularly enamoured with the play he could easily have renewed his licence and facilitated its production elsewhere. Similarly Ronald Adam and Andre van Gyseghem, both of whom had been involved with it at the Embassy, could easily have acquired a new licence on the Embassy's behalf. In December 1931 it had clearly been felt that
Britannia of Billingsgate
was a safer bet than
Chimneys
. The critics had been lukewarm towards
Britannia
, but it proved popular with audiences and was perhaps a more obvious candidate for a pre-Christmas West End run than Christie's new work, particularly if they did feel that it needed rewrites.

In any event, Alec Rea presumably felt that it was ultimately worth sacrificing
Chimneys
to ensure a future for
Britannia
. In reality, too, he must have known some time in advance that he was going to give up the lease on the Embassy, and one cannot help surmising that it was more than coincidence that the new dates for the production given to Agatha turned out to be just after the theatre's enforced temporary closure. By the time that the Embassy and Reandco parted company Agatha was already back at the archaeological dig at Nineveh with her new husband, and the problems with
Chimneys
were no doubt soon forgotten. Whatever the truth of the matter, the situation had been finessed in a manner that carefully avoided putting the firm of Reandco out of favour with Agatha Christie, playwright, and they were to work together again in the future.

It is not difficult to see why the ensemble of a small repertory theatre might have lost their initial enthusiasm for Christie's rambling, light-hearted melodrama once they started rehearsing
it. As a piece of theatre, it offers many more unwelcome challenges to the director, designer and actors than
Black Coffee
.
The Secret of Chimneys
does not immediately lend itself to stage adaptation, and limiting the action of the novel to two rooms in a country house necessitates the cutting of various multi-locational escapades in its early chapters, which are set in Bulawayo and London. As a result the stage version is burdened with a great deal of back-story and this, combined with a convoluted plot involving diamonds, oil concessions, exiled royalty from a fictional principality, international diplomacy, secret societies, an elusive master criminal, suspicious foreigners, wily assassins, blackmail, deception, multiple impersonations, unexpected guests and an unexpected corpse can make the whole thing a bit impenetrable. The Lord Chamberlain's reader's report, dated 20 November 1931, describes the play as ‘harmless' and ‘melodramatic', noting that it is ‘excessively complicated to read but I dare say will be less complicated when acted; it is naturally written'.
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Virginia Revel, the heroine of
Chimneys
, is very much a British ‘Elaine', ‘about twenty-six and bursting with vitality, a radiant gallant creature'. As she becomes embroiled in various potentially dangerous exploits she exclaims, ‘You don't know how I'm enjoying myself. After years of Ascot and Goodwood and Cowes and shooting parties and the Riviera and then Ascot all over again – suddenly to be plunged into the middle of this! (Closes her eyes in ecstasy).'
⁴⁴

The Foreign Office's Honourable George Lomax, however, represents a more traditional view. ‘I disapprove utterly of women being mixed up in these matters. It is always dangerous. Women have no sense of the importance of public affairs. They display a deplorable levity at the most serious moments. The House of Commons is ruined – absolutely ruined nowadays – all the old traditions – (He breaks off) I am wandering from the point.' At time of the play's writing 1929's ‘flapper election' was yet to come, and Lomax is referring to the tiny number of women MPs who had been returned to Parliament since 1918, when women over thirty were given the right to vote
(subject to minimum property qualifications) and women over twenty-one were given the right to stand for Parliament.

The feisty Virginia, however, finds a natural ally in adventurer Anthony Cade, who remarks, ‘Perhaps I was born colour blind. When I see the red light – I can't help forging ahead. And in the end, you know, that spells disaster. Bound to. (a pause) Quite right, really. That sort of thing is bad for traffic generally.'

When the two eventually but inevitably tie the knot he confesses:

       
ANTHONY: Darling! I have let you believe such a lot of lies about me. And I have married you under false pretences. What are you going to do about it?

       
VIRGINIA: Do? Why we will go to Herzoslovakia and play at being kings and queens.

       
ANTHONY: The average life of a king or queen out there is under four years. They always get assassinated.

       
VIRGINIA: How marvellous! We'll have a lot of fun – teaching the brigands not to be brigands, and the assassins not to assassinate and generally improving the moral tone of the country.

Christie's dialogue is seen to best advantage when presented in dramatic form, and it is notable that, in the plays which are adaptations of novels, it is often an improvement on the equivalent passage in a book from which it is taken; this delightful banter being a case in point. Indeed, her stated frustrations with the need to break up the flow of dialogue in a novel with descriptive passages are never more apparent than in the novel of
The Secret of Chimneys
itself where, instead of a description of the house, she gives us this: ‘The car passed in through the park gates of Chimneys. Descriptions of that historic place can be found in any guidebook. It is also No 3 in Historic Homes of England, price 21s. On Thursday, coaches come over from Middlingham and view those portions of it which are open to the public. In view of all these facilities, to describe Chimneys would be superfluous.'
⁴⁵

Intriguingly, sections of
The Secret of Chimneys
are written as though they were themselves part of a playscript. Here is the start of Chapter 10: ‘Inspector Badgeworthy in his office. Time, 8.30am. A tall, portly man, Inspector Badgeworthy, with a heavy regulation tread. Inclined to breathe hard in moments of professional strain . . .' And most of the final chapter is written in the present tense, again in the idiom of a playscript:

Scene – Chimneys, 11am Thursday morning.

Johnson, the police constable, with his coat off, digging.

Something in the nature of a funeral feeling seems to be in the air. The friends and relations stand round the grave that Johnson is digging . . .

The play, like the book, features a character named Herman Isaacstein, who represents the interests of a British oil syndicate. Although his position as a high-powered man of finance is clearly respected by the other characters, they occasionally make reference to him, usually humorously, in a manner typical of the casual anti-semitism of the pre-war upper middle classes. Like that of Hergé, the Belgian creator of boy detective Tintin, Christie's work was published between the 1920s and the 1970s, spanning and reflecting for popular consumption a century of extraordinary social and political upheaval; and it is important to consider the context in which it was written before passing judgement. Because Christie was still writing in the 1970s it is easy to forget that she was raised an Edwardian and, like Hergé's, some of her early work contains elements of racial stereotyping that typify her class and the era in which she was writing. Suffice to say that, when
Chimneys
finally received its stage premiere in Calgary in 2006, certain lines relating to Isaacstein were subtly adjusted to take account of the sensibilities of modern audiences.

For all her efforts to provide audiences with alternative fare, however, Poirot was to continue to weigh heavily on Christie's theatrical ambitions and, on Broadway as in the West End, the character was to make his debut before his creator. Key to
successfully dating Agatha's correspondence relating to
Chimneys
(previous misdating has exacerbated the perceived problem of the ‘disappearing play') are the references to the forthcoming Broadway production of
Alibi
, starring Charles Laughton, which received its premiere at the Booth Theatre on 8 February 1932. Laughton had already made his own Broadway debut, enjoying a modest success in
Payment Deferred
, an adaptation of a 1926 C.S. Forester crime novel presented at the Lyceum Theatre at the end of 1931.
Payment Deferred
was produced by Gilbert Miller, a defiantly independent producer who was a friend of Basil Dean's and who was later to play a key role in Agatha's own Broadway success. Broadway was a calling-card for Hollywood for British actors in the 1930s, and Laughton felt that
Alibi
would provide a notable showcase for him, as it had in London. The play had been successfully revived in repertory, notably at London's Regent Theatre in 1931, and in the same year the clean-shaven young Austin Trevor, a former ReandeaN player, had improbably played Poirot in British film versions of both
Alibi
and
Black Coffee
.

For the Broadway production of
Alibi
, Laughton teamed up with the notoriously acerbic and bullying Jed Harris, a prolific thirty-two-year-old producer/director whose various Broadway producing successes to date had included journalistic comedy
The Front Page
at the Times Square Theatre in 1929. Harris, who had changed his name from Jacob Horowitz, purchased a licence for $500 from Hughes Massie at the end of 1931 and engaged John Anderson, a critic on the
New York Evening Journal
, to revise the script for the American market; a process which Agatha was not involved in but which, from her letters to Max, she was evidently aware of. Authors' royalties were split three ways, between Christie, Michael Morton and John Anderson, unusually giving Christie herself a minority share in the work.
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The title was also changed, to
The Fatal Alibi
, and the production was credited as ‘staged by Mr Laughton' although Harris was closely involved in the rehearsal process.

The cast also notably included Broadway veteran Effie
Shannon, but it was Laughton who once again stole the show. The Booth Theatre's playbill (i.e. programme) shows a moustachioed Laughton in a gaudy pin-striped suit and carnation gurning and waving his hands in the air. ‘Look at me,' it clearly states.
⁴⁷

The three-act, five-scene acting masterclass that
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
had become was not welcomed by the American critics. The
New York Times
commented, ‘Since Mr Laughton enjoys playing the part, a guileless theatregoer may enjoy watching him. But colourful acting, slightly detached from the flow of narrative, can also temper a drama's illusion. In the opinion of this department, Mr Laughton's lithographic performance has that subtle effect. It diverts attention from the play.'
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Legendary Hollywood gossip columnist Sidney Skolsky in his syndicated ‘Tintypes' column led off an affectionate character sketch with:

Charles Laughton is the latest English actor to invade Broadway and capture the critics and the public – a neat trick. Although movie companies have already tried to entice him to go to Hollywood, little is known about him here. And even less is known about him in London . . . Is sensitive about his weight. Wants to forget about it and not step on the scales. The wife has a scale in the house and tries to coax him to step on it by placing a piece of cake on the machine . . . Normally retires between one-thirty and two in the morning. When with Jed Harris between six and seven in the morning . . .

His nicknames are Fatty, Henry VIII and Pudge and Billy. The wife's pet name for him can't be printed.
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