I would never spill the beans in a review of a whodunit. Only a small fraction of the viewer’s experience would be spoiled, however, if I revealed the ingenious ending of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, the current production at the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. This marvelous show is about the journey, not the destination.
The stagecraft and the performances are dazzling. At Friday evening’s opening performance, I was transfixed when Christie’s iconic detective, Hecule Poirot, meticulously explained of how he solved the crime, even though I already knew the solution.
Ken Ludwig wrote the delightful script. In an interview on the web, Ludwig says Agatha Christie Limited reached out to him to find out if he would be interested in adapting a Christie novel for the stage and allowed him to choose which one. He picked Murder on the Orient Express because of the exotic setting, colorful characters, and historical context of the 1934 novel. Ludwig has always been at home writing about the 1930s. Two of his most successful shows, Lend Me a Tenor and Crazy for You are also set in that period.
At the outset, an urgent matter has called Poirot back to London from Istanbul. The first-class section of the train between the two cities—the Orient Express—is unaccountably full, but Poirot secures a place though his friend Monsieur Bouc, who runs the railroad.
Poirot’s fellow passengers are an eclectic, suspicious group. While the train is at a standstill because of a snowstorm, one of the first-class passengers is murdered. To protect the railroad’s reputation, Monsieur Bouc implores Poirot to investigate the crime. After seeing no footprints in the snow outside the compartment where the murder took place, Poirot concludes that the murderer must still be on the train.
The settings for the action are established by amazing projections and richly detailed set pieces that revolve into place on the turntable of the Browning Theatre.
In the script, the first scene occurs while the stage is dark. The audience “hear[s] a domestic scene unfold in the blackness in front of” it. At The Rep, the audience sees what happens in a black-and-white film projected on the set. Giving this scene visual impact was a splendid idea because the scene ends with a crime that is an essential element of the plot.
Equally stunning video effects depict the band in the dining room of an Istanbul hotel, the trainshed towering over the Istanbul railroad station, and the snow outside the windows of the Orient Express. Michael Salvatore Commendatore designed projections.
Tim Mackabee’s highly reconfigurable set design provides many different views of the train. Opening night scene changes received repeated rounds of applause when the turntable wheeled a striking new view into place.
Fabio Toblini’s costumes admirably evoke the period and the characters’ social classes. During Poirot’s exposition of the crime, Jason ‘Lynch’s lighting arrestingly calls attention to the faces of characters whose lines are flashbacks. Composers and sound designers Charles Coes and Nathan A. Roberts provide impressive original music and sound cues. Michael Pierce was fight consultant; Will Bonfiglio and Rachel Tibbetts were intimacy consultants.
Under Hana Shariff’s astute direction, the ensemble cast adopts a consistently heightened acting style that brings out lots of comedy without out undermining the drama.
Led by Armando Duran’s commanding performance as Poirot, the opening night cast was excellent. Its members were:
- Janie Brookshire as Countess Andrenyi
- Cameron Jamarr Davis as Hector Macqueen
- Ellen Harvey as Helen Hubbard
- Christopher Hickey as Colonel Arbuthnot
- Aria Maholchic (understudy for Margaret Ivey) as Mary Debenham
- Jamil A.C. Mangan as Monsieur Bouc
- Joel Moses as Samuel Ratchet
- Gayton Scott as Princess Dragomiroff
- Michael Thanh Tran as both Michel (the conductor) and the head waiter
- Fatima Wardak as Greta Ohlsson
The ensemble from Webster University included Luka Cruz, Kyleigh Grimsbo, Aria Maholchic, and Colby Willis. In the cast of the film were Nicholas Freed as Father, Mary Heyl as Mother, Carmen Retzer as Nanny, and Imi Schneider as Daisy Armstrong. Jodi Stockton was the understudy for Princess Dragomiroff and Helen Hubbard. Joshua David Robinson coached the ably executed dialects.
Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express continues through April 9 at the Loretto-Hilton Center, 130 Edgar Road, on the Webster University campus.
—Gerry Kowarsky
Photo by Phillip Hamer Photography
