Curtain Up (63 page)

Agatha Christie's new play,
Verdict
, which was presented at the Grand, Wolverhampton last week, shows a new point of departure for the author. The emphasis shifts from the creation of an atmosphere of suspicion to a psychologising of the characters involved. Moral problems, too, are drawn in. The bare pattern of the play is made quite shapely with the same skill that appears in the author's more popular style of mystery play. When the murder of the professor's
ailing wife is committed, no mystery surrounds it. Instead, we are invited to examine the character of the professor and the way his single-minded attachment to his ideals brings suffering to all those devoted to him.
⁹⁵

From early on, though, it was clear that the ending of
Verdict
was going to be problematic. In a courteous correspondence with the
Birmingham Post
's critic, J.C. Trewin (later to contribute an entertaining chapter on Christie's theatre work to H.R.F. Keating's book,
Agatha Christie, First Lady of Crime
), Peter Saunders took issue with the poor review that he had given to the play:

Although naturally disappointed that you did not like my production of Verdict, may I say that at least it was a reasoned criticism, and as such, I feel I must answer it.

    
1. You say it is as artificial an anecdote as you have heard for some time. Do you really think it more so than Witness for the Prosecution which you liked?

    
2. You complain that the ultimate clue is all too predictable. But you have overlooked the fact that this is neither a thriller nor a whodunit. It is a
play
. You may indeed say – in fact you do say – that it is a bad play, but should you look for a surprise ending in something that was never intended to surprise?

    
3. The final minute to which you object is as much a bone of contention as the final twist in Witness for the Prosecution, when the majority of provincial critics urged Agatha to take it out. Already, with this ending we are having the same tug-of-war. I know that if I leave it in, it will be criticised as a phoney ending, and if I take it out the author will be accused of letting her play ‘fade into nothingness'.

In your final paragraph you ask, I gather, for a return to the straightforward whodunit. It is in response to criticism that
the characters are always the same, with butlers, maids and country vicars, that Mrs Christie has tried to be different. Her difficulty is, of course, that her name on the jar proclaims the kind of jam it is. Perhaps this time theatregoers will be disappointed.

Please do not take this letter in any way as an aggrieved producer who thinks he knows best. I am well alive to the kindness with which you have treated many of my plays in the past.
⁹⁶

Trewin replied, ‘It was charming of you to write. I felt very guilty about Verdict, if I can put it in that way, because as a rule Agatha Christie gets me – and complaints seem almost disloyal. I look forward to seeing the play again. Here it may very well be that preparation, foreknowledge, helps . . . Mrs Christie sentimentalises the last curtain, I think falsely. Better, surely, to let the play remain ruthless (I've always wondered whether Rattigan was right to alter the original tragic end of Deep Blue Sea).'
⁹⁷

Saunders responded, ‘I must confess that a lot of criticism has been aroused at the return of Lisa and it may be that this will still be changed, although I don't think so. As I know that you will not be influenced by anything I say in this personal letter, I admit freely that I am not looking forward to the London First Night. I am sure one or two of the critics will really have a lovely time – if you know what I mean.'
⁹⁸

As well as problems with the casting and the script, Saunders had once again experienced difficulties when seeking a West End theatre for a Christie play; but he eventually secured the Strand Theatre, yet another non-‘Group' venue, where the play opened on 22 May 1958. Other West End attractions on offer that night included
Simply Heavenly
, an ‘All-Negro musical' presented by Jack Hylton at the Adelphi; Lesley Storm's
Roar Like a Dove
, produced and directed by
Towards Zero
's Murray MacDonald at the Phoenix and heralded by Kenneth Tynan as ‘a resounding, self-evident hit'; Terence Rattigan's less well-received
Variation on a Theme
produced by Tennents at the
Globe; and the London premiere of
My Fair Lady
, a rare Tennents venture into musical theatre, which had opened to huge acclaim the previous month at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and which, as the company's largest scale commercial venture to date, took full advantage of the abolition of the entertainment tax. Meanwhile, at the Ambassadors,
The Mousetrap
was advertising its ‘Sixth Dazzling Year'.

With astonishing irony after all the debates about the ending, the young stage manager, Wendy Noel, who had worked on a number of previous Saunders productions including
Witness for the Prosecution
and
Towards Zero
, called the final curtain early on opening night and created the ending that J.C. Trewin had wanted, curtailing the performance before Lisa's return and leaving Karl, bereft, on the stage. This did not go down well with the audience, and there were boos from the gallery. In a review in the
Daily Telegraph
headlined ‘GALLERY BOOS CHRISTIE PLAY – A MELANCHOLY OCCASION', W.A. Darlington wrote:

It seems that there is no grace in our gallery-goers – in those, at any rate, who booed when the curtain fell at the Strand last night on Agatha Christie's new play
Verdict
. If there is a writer in existence who has deserved gratitude from the many-headed, it is Mrs Christie. So when, for once, trying herself out in a new sort of play, she fails to bring it off, could not they let the melancholy occasion go by in silence? . . . There was no dextrous twist at the end, which solved everything and brought the lovers together. Instead there was a great scene of renunciation and parting, which rang false and fell flat.
⁹⁹

Booing from the gallery in West End theatres had become something of an issue in 1958, and one on which Saunders, of course, had strong opinions; its occurrence at the end of
Verdict
was by no means an isolated incident, but it was certainly a first for an Agatha Christie play. Under the headline ‘AN IMPROBABLE VERDICT: PLAY BY AGATHA CHRISTIE BOOED', the
Times
critic wrote, ‘Miss Agatha Christie has brought off
some mighty fine stage surprises in her time. Alas, all the surprises in her latest play are surprises that people should behave as she makes them behave . . . The lady companion is obviously “on a spot” but after her acquittal she, who has all the time impressed as a sensible and sympathetic woman, surprises us by tearing the quixotry of her adored professor to shreds and leaving him for ever . . . And the gallery booed, a surprising thing to happen to an Agatha Christie, but all things considered perhaps on this occasion not so surprising.'
¹⁰⁰

It is important to put the ‘booing' incident in context, however. A year later, man of the moment John Osborne's short-lived West End musical
The World of Paul Slickley
was also booed on its opening night, on this occasion from the stalls rather than the gallery.

Even with
Verdict
's correct ending restored, there was no pleasing the press.
The Stage
's London critic disagreed with his provincial counterpart, although he clearly did not see the ill-fated opening performance, noting that ‘the professor and Lisa at last come together in a musical aura of true love and understanding which is unbelievably sloppy'. Under the headline ‘REAL LIFE DEFEATS THE THRILLER QUEEN', the review concluded that

Agatha Christie, Queen of the thriller writers, apparently attempted in
Verdict
, at the Strand, to write a play about real life and living people. Having for the time abandoned her murder puzzles, cardboard characters and reliance on technical ingenuity and a gift for creating suspense, she had to face a variety of fresh problems, none of which is satisfactorily solved in
Verdict
. Mrs Christie in trying to create flesh and blood characters succeeds only in giving us dummies . . . Probably Charles Hickman should not be blamed too much for a thoroughly pedestrian production; a genius could not have saved the play.
¹⁰¹

The 25 May 1958 edition of the
Observer
is interesting in a number of respects. Kenneth Tynan praises the Moscow
Art Theatre, performing
Uncle Vanya
at Sadler's Wells, and gives a less than enthusiastic review to the premiere of Harold Pinter's
The Birthday Party
at the Lyric, Hammersmith. Laurence Kitchen is left to review
Verdict
, and comments that it is

a dislocation of the Christie formula, trying to do an Ibsen on us and achieving lesser Pinero . . . beyond the patter of tiny clichés there are frustrating murmurs of a strong theme struggling to make itself heard. The murderess (Moira Redmond) remarks at one point ‘I'm not a virgin, if that's what you've been worrying about'. Voraciously Beat Generation and neo-Fascist, she is brought to dramatic life without compromise, wielding a corrupt logic and the Sack line [the latest dress fashion]. Alarmed, it seems, by her own creation, Mrs Christie has this girl run over by a bus and takes refuge in the consoling babble of a shaggy old family doctor.

This is at least a considered response to the play, although it would have been interesting to see what Tynan himself made of it. Elsewhere in the newspaper there is a major article on the excavations at Nimrud, in which the reporter remarks that ‘The good living, and a feeling of good sense not always found in such expeditions, was in large part due, I suspect, to the presiding influence of Mrs Mallowan, wife of the distinguished Director. I was allowed to make use of a small, almost secret, room that she has had added to the end of the house and where, during the opening phase of each season, she retreats to work and becomes once more Agatha Christie.'

Beresford Egan, theatre critic of the
Courier
magazine, seems to have been alone in identifying a strand of Christie's previous work in
Verdict
. He wrote to Saunders the week after the West End opening:

Once again, I find myself at variance with my fellow critics. While granting them a certain justification, I enjoyed Verdict.
It was magnificently played, and, on that score alone, deserved a better fate. I am afraid Miss Christie got herself rather entangled with ‘Mary Westmacott' – which is an interesting experiment, but obviously risky. The public, like mice, can only be attracted by the same trap. They are naturally wary of anything new. Agatha Christie and Whodunit are synonyms, and should never be separated. Nevertheless, I wouldn't have missed Verdict for the world. May fortune smile on your next production.
¹⁰²

Arguably, as with
A Daughter's a Daughter
, there may have been a case for selling
Verdict
as a Mary Westmacott play. Even though the cat was out of the bag as to Westmacott's true identity, it would neatly have circumvented the issue of audience expectation and might even have given Saunders the confidence to ignore Mrs Keogh. Although no writer at all is credited for
The Lie
, and it pre-dated Christie's adoption of her
nom de plume
, it was in effect the first ‘Westmacott' play
.
A Daughter's a Daughter
is the second. And
Verdict
is indeed arguably the third; even biographer Laura Thompson likes it. Or it may simply be the case that these are actually the only three ‘Agatha Christie' plays, and that the rest of her repertoire as a playwright bears witness to a lifelong struggle against what audiences expected to see.

The damning reviews were reflected in poor ticket sales, and in the two weeks after the opening night the box office income fell below Saunders' weekly cost of running the production, a scenario which allowed the theatre to give him two weeks' notice to close; this they duly did, in a regretful and politely worded letter.
¹⁰³
Saunders would doubtless have been grateful that he was thus relieved of the responsibility for closing the production, after a mere thirty-six performances. It is a great shame that Patricia Jessel's happy memories of the night she was cheered when she walked into Sardi's on Broadway would have been clouded by the memories of the night she was booed from the gallery in the West End. Jessel, who was to die in 1968 at the age of forty-seven, had by all
accounts given the definitive interpretation of a Christie stage role in her performance as Romaine, and her own reviews for
Verdict
were also complimentary: ‘establishes Patricia Jessel as a must for any Christie play', said the
Daily Mirror
.
¹⁰⁴

Charles Hickman would go on to direct a successful run of Jack Popplewell's
A Day in the Life of . . .
for Saunders at the Savoy in October 1958, with the unfortunate Wendy Noel, who had evidently been forgiven by both Hickman and Saunders, as stage manager. Typically, Christie's first thought on the night had been for the distress caused to the young stage manager who called the cue early, and she wrote to Noel the next day to assure her that the play would have received poor reviews in any case.
¹⁰⁵
From what we know of the critical response to the correct ending, Christie wasn't wrong; but it is nonetheless something of a mystery how such an error came to be made, given that the production had been well run-in on tour prior to its West End opening. I can't help wondering whether Saunders, following the Trewin correspondence and in Christie's absence, had been experimenting with different endings on tour and that an alternative cue had therefore been marked in to the prompt copy, causing confusion on the opening night.

Verdict
was the first Christie flop of the Saunders regime, and the first of her plays not to return a handsome profit to his investors. Two investors had each contributed the not inconsiderable sum of £1,000 to the production, with Saunders himself covering the remaining £3,000.
¹⁰⁶
Herbert de Leon, who had invested in
Spider's Web
, notably was not among those financing the show on this occasion despite the fact that two of his clients, Patricia Jessel and Viola Keats (playing Anya), were performing in it. It is very clear that no one on the management side gave much for its chances from the outset. The production actually cost £4,791, making it the most expensive Christie play to date,
¹⁰⁷
despite the fact that considerably less was spent on the set and on the advertising than for
Witness for the Prosecution.