There was considerably more to the prolific doyenne of the murder mystery, Agatha Christie, than Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot and the eternal Mousetrap which has been a West End fixture for well over half a century. Under the name Mary Westmacott, she also wrote several novels as well as this rarity which played for a single week in Bath back in 1956 and has barely been seen since.
Though decidedly old-fashioned in structure, it turns out to be an acute and involving study of a mother and daughter relationship, set immediately after the Second World War. There are no dead bodies, but rather a touching, sometimes witty and psychologically perceptive account of two women who end up hurting each other in ways they never intended.
Jenny Seagrove (excellent) is Ann, the long-widowed, but still very attractive mother of recently demobbed Sarah who returns to their comfortable, middleclass home and expects nothing – not even the placing of a chair – to have changed in the three years since she went away. But in the meantime, Ann has fallen in love with and become engaged to decent (if rather pompous) Richard and Sarah (Honeysuckle Weeks) does all she can to sabotage their imminent marriage.
The consequences of her selfishness are revisited three and four years later and Christie (who apparently drew partly on her relationship with her own daughter) has constructed an engrossing and credible account of unhappiness and misguided maternal indulgence which, in essence, still rings true today.
Roy Marsden directs with a sure hand and, against all my expectations, this proves to be a surprisingly satisfying and recommended revival.
Trafalgar Studios 1, Whitehall, SW1A 2DY (
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