Curtain Up (36 page)

It came to me suddenly one day that
The Hollow
would make a good play. I said so to Rosalind, who has had the valuable role in life of eternally trying to discourage me without success.

‘Making a play of
The Hollow
, Mother!' said Rosalind in horror. ‘It's a good book, and I like it, but you can't
possibly
make it into a play.'

‘Yes, I can,' I said, stimulated by the opposition.

‘Oh, I wish you wouldn't,' said Rosalind, sighing.
⁹

It may well be, of course, that Rosalind's real motivation was to spare her mother the disappointment of another
Murder on the Nile
or
Appointment with Death
; nevertheless, more than twenty years later, Agatha reminded her daughter of the exchange in a letter: ‘I have had to bear Alibi – I hated Murder at the Vicarage and a Miss Marple of twenty odd – and several other of the “adapted” plays from my books . . . It was because I hated them so much that I determined to adapt The Hollow myself – I did that at Pwllywrach [Rosalind's home] and you did your utmost then to persuade me not to!'
¹⁰

The novel of
The Hollow
had been dedicated to the Sullivans, whose hospitality Agatha had so enjoyed in the war, and whose swimming pool is a feature of the story. But neither their swimming pool nor her host's favourite role were to appear in Christie's dramatisation. Christie notes, ‘Anyway, I enjoyed myself scribbling down ideas for The Hollow. It was, of course, in some ways rather more of a novel than a detective story. The Hollow was a book I always thought I had ruined by the introduction of Poirot . . . so when I went to sketch out the play, out went Poirot.'
¹¹
This was the third of her dramatisations to cut the character completely.

The Hollow
is another of Christie's plays about which we hear the views of Max, whose comments on the subject of his wife's theatrical endeavours and on the theatre industry in general in his book
Mallowan's Memoirs
tend to be very perceptive: ‘The Hollow was brilliantly adapted from the book by Agatha herself in a manner that shows her flair for the theatre,' says Max, ‘and it is interesting to compare the book published in 1946 with the play . . . Here Agatha exploited the dramatic potential of the novel to the full, with the utmost economy in assembling the plot . . . The book itself is in my
opinion not one of her best, for it is disjointed and tends to ramble, but exceptionally it features a number of romances, and the portrayal of the women is penetrating, the result of a perceptive feminine outlook.'
¹²

The plot centres around the fate of self-centred Harley Street Lothario Dr John Cristow, who finds himself at a house party with his dull but devoted wife, his mistress (a sculptress) and his former lover (a Hollywood film star). His mistress, Henrietta, seems to have the measure of him:

       
HENRIETTA: It's dangerous to be as oblivious as you are.

       
JOHN: Oblivious?

       
HENRIETTA: You never see or know anything that people are feeling about.

       
JOHN: I should have said the opposite.

       
HENRIETTA: You see what you are looking at – yes. You're like a searchlight. A powerful beam turned to the one spot where your interest is, but behind it, and on each side of it, darkness.

       
JOHN: Henrietta, darling, what's all this?

       
HENRIETTA: I tell you, it's dangerous. You assume everybody likes you – Lucy and Gerda, Henry, Midge and Edward. Do you know what they all feel about you?

       
JOHN: And Henrietta? What does she feel? At least – (He catches her hand and draws her to him) I'm sure of you.

       
HENRIETTA: You can be sure of no one in this world, John.
¹³

On one level, this neatly sets up a list of ‘whodunit' (or who may be about to do it) for the audience. But there is clearly something else being said here. This is a man who describes his wife, Gerda, thus: ‘I didn't want a raving beauty as a wife. I didn't want a damned egoist out to grab everything she could get. I wanted safety and peace and devotion, and all the quiet enduring things of life. I wanted someone who'd take her ideas from
me
.'

As with so much of Christie's stage work there can be no doubt that, in
The Hollow
, it is the women who are in the
driving seat. Henrietta Angkatell the talented sculptress, Veronica Craye the gloriously self-centred actress and even Gerda Cristow the apparently compliant wife, run circles around a group of inept and ineffectual men. And Lady Angkatell is Christie's finest theatrical
grande dame
, though a far more amiable take on the role than her snooty predecessors Miss ffoliott-ffoulkes and Lady Westholme. Former Indian provincial governor Sir Henry comments admiringly of his wife, ‘She's always got away with things. I don't suppose any other woman in the world could have flouted the traditions of Government House as she did. Most Governors' wives have to toe the line of convention. But not Lucy! Oh, dear me, no! She played merry hell with precedence at dinner parties – and that, my dear Henrietta, is the blackest of crimes. She put deadly enemies next to each other. She ran riot over the colour question. And instead of setting everyone at loggerheads, I'm damned if she didn't get away with it.' According to her autobiography, Christie herself had suffered the embarrassment of unintentionally flouting the accepted seating plan at an official dinner engagement on the Grand Tour, and it must have delighted her to create a character who made a virtue of revelling in such subversion.

The Hollow
may be set at a country house party, which is, in fact, by no means typical of a Christie play, but it revels in questioning the precepts of that setting and, importantly, places the inhabitants of the house concerned very precisely in a post-
war context. The play's portrayal of a crumbling aristocracy in a time of rapid social change could easily take its cue from Chekhov, and amongst the many challenges to the established order of things faced by the play's central family is one from within, as young Midge (a name we last heard in
Someone at the Window
) opts to go and work in a shop:

       
EDWARD: You can't really like working in a shop, Midge.

       
MIDGE: Who said I liked it?

       
EDWARD: Then why do it?

       
MIDGE: What do you suggest I should live on? Beautiful thoughts?

       
EDWARD: But my dear girl. If I'd had any idea you were hard up . . .

       
SIR HENRY: Save your breath, Edward. She's obstinate. Refused an allowance and won't come and live with us, though we've begged her to. I can't think of anything nicer than having young Midge in the house.

       
EDWARD: Why don't you, Midge?

       
MIDGE: I have ideas. Poor, proud and prejudiced – that's me.

(Lady Angkatell enters)

They're badgering me, Lucy.

       
LADY ANGKATELL: Are they, darling?

       
EDWARD: I don't like the idea of her working in that dress shop.

       
MIDGE: Well find me a better job.

       
EDWARD: There surely must be something . . .

       
MIDGE: I've no particular qualifications, remember. Just a pleasant manner and the ability to keep my temper when I'm shouted at.

       
EDWARD: Do you mean to say that customers are rude to you?

       
MIDGE: Abominably rude, sometimes. It's their privilege.

       
EDWARD: But my dear girl, that's all wrong. If only I'd known . . .

       
MIDGE: How should you know? Your world and mine are far apart. I'm only half an Angkatell. The other half's just plain business girl, with unemployment always lurking round the corner in spite of the politicians' brave words.

When Midge is later berated over the telephone by her unpleasant employer (characterised as Jewish in the novel, but not in the play), and Edward suggests that she quits, Midge responds, ‘To show an independent spirit one needs an independent income . . . What do you know about jobs? Getting them and keeping them? This job, as it happens, is fairly well paid, with reasonable hours . . . Yes, money. That's what I use to live on. I've got a job that
keeps
me, you understand.'

Even the butler, Gudgeon, has had to review his recruit
ment policy for new staff. Here we find him training a young maid who clears glasses, empties ashtrays and folds newspapers during the following exchange:

       
GUDGEON: Sir Henry was the Governor of one of the principal provinces in India. He would have been the next Viceroy most probably if it hadn't been for that terrible Labour government doing away with the Empire.

       
DORIS: My
dad's
Labour. (there is a pause as Gudgeon looks pityingly at Doris. She takes a step back, apologetically) Oh, I'm sorry, Mr Gudgeon.

       
GUDGEON: (Tolerantly) You can't help your parents, Doris.

       
DORIS: (Humbly) I know they're not class.

       
GUDGEON: (Patronizingly) You are coming along quite nicely – although it's not what I've been used to. Gamekeeper's daughter or Head Groom's daughter, a young girl who knows her manners and has been brought up right. That's what I like to train.

       
DORIS: Sorry, Mr Gudgeon . . .

       
GUDGEON: Ah well, it seems those days are gone for ever.

       
DORIS: Miss Simmonds is always down on me too.

       
GUDGEON: She's doing it for your own good, Doris, she's training you.

       
DORIS: Shan't get more money, shall I, when I'm trained?

       
GUDGEON: Not much, I'm afraid.

       
DORIS: Doesn't seem worth being trained, then, does it?

       
GUDGEON: I'm afraid you may be right, my girl.

Seventy-three-year-old Bertie Meyer eventually passed up the opportunity to produce
The Hollow
, believing that it would be too difficult to cast; a fear that he shared with Peter Saunders when giving the young producer his blessing to take it on. And so it was that in September 1950 Saunders obtained a licence to be the originating producer of
The Hollow
. That month, he moved into new offices in Trafalgar Square, from where he was to work for the next twenty-one years.

Although he had at one point worked at a film studio,
Saunders was a relative newcomer to the theatrical game and not particularly well connected, so his first challenge was to find a director who would pass muster with Christie and Cork. Hughes Massie, perhaps misguidedly, persuaded him to investigate directors with an association with the work of Edgar Wallace, but Saunders' preferred candidate for directing
The Hollow
was Hubert Gregg, whose qualifications for the job at that time, as Gregg himself admits, were hardly impressive. The thirty-five-year-old show-business jack of all trades had worked as an actor, notably in comedies but also as Henry V at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, and as an announcer for the BBC. He had directed some plays for the Sunday societies (which ‘tried out' new productions in one-off performances at West End theatres), but his main claim to fame at that time was as the writer of the song ‘Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner', popularised by Bud Flanagan in 1947. Gregg eventually achieved a further modicum of celebrity as the host of BBC Radio 2's long-running ‘oldies' music programme
Thanks for the Memory
.

Gregg's book,
Agatha Christie and All that Mousetrap
(1980), provides a parallel account to Saunders' of the creation of much of Christie's stage work, but has numerous flaws. In it he accuses Christie of having overlooked Saunders' contribution to her theatrical success in her autobiography when, in fact, she goes to great lengths to give credit to his role. She does not, however, mention Gregg, who directed four of her plays (as well as babysitting
the Mousetrap
for a number of years), despite devoting a paragraph to the skills of Irene Hentschel. It seems that hell hath no fury like a director scorned: as well as giving away the endings of several plays (including
The Mousetrap
), Gregg takes credit for having extensively rewritten
The Hollow
, and for coming up with the title of
The Mousetrap
and the ending of
Witness for the Prosecution
. He goes to great lengths to examine Christie's 1926 ‘disappearance', implying that it was a publicity stunt, accuses her of being inhospitable and, to add insult to injury, includes a remarkably unflattering photograph of ‘Agatha as I remember her', doubtless in the
full knowledge of how sensitive she was about photographs of herself. His
Daily Telegraph
obituary states, ‘He had little affection for the author, whom he later described as a “mean old bitch”.'
Gregg's family have subsequently edited and marketed an ‘autobiography' which touches on his work with Christie and repeats some of the assertions made in his 1980 book.
¹⁴

It was also presumably his family who put up for sale his annotated director's scripts for some of the Christie plays he directed, along with a small amount of correspondence from the playwright. I was very kindly given access to these items by an antiquarian bookshop which had purchased them at auction for resale, and will refer to them as they become relevant in our story. The antiquarian book market has not always been a friend to those protecting the Christie legacy, particularly as a quantity of original manuscripts bearing the Hughes Massie label have unaccountably come into circulation in recent years, but in this instance it came up trumps and provided a unique insight into the realities of Gregg's involvement. Although two of the Christie plays that Gregg directed were successes, and doubtless owed much of that success to the care that he invested in their production, it is all too apparent that he had no real regard for either the plays or the playwright. Christie was no fool, and doubtless detected this trait in him, so whilst she commends his work in private correspondence with others, I cannot imagine that his omission from her autobiography is entirely accidental. It is not my own intention to underplay Gregg's role in the story of Agatha Christie, playwright, but it is a sadness that the discourtesy of his book will forever taint the memory of his contribution.