Westcliff-on-Sea

Palace Theatre

PALACE: Westcliff-on-Sea BO 01702 342564

Directed by Kristine Landon-Smith

Runs 2 Hours. One interval

Review: Timothy Ramsden 23 July 2001

Mixed studio blessing in the Palace Christie season

While the Christie cruise steams on, the Palace’s Dixon studio turns into a public saloon on a Nile cruiser. As with many adaptations of her novels Christie removed Hercule Poirot from the plot, leaving the deductions to be done by the eminently respectable Canon Pennefather (Daniel Coll), who comes briefly under suspicion himself. His accuser is Smith, a communist who reads the Times and a scourge of the upper classes who turns out to be a titled bloke in prole mufti.All credit to those who play the foreigners: Gary Richards tactfully Teutonic as Dr Bessner, Joy Merriman damping down the hysterics as the fated Louise – a Frenchwoman and a maid, by Jove – and Anthony Houghton, who cleverly sidesteps the Egyptian stereotype as a Steward every mite as ungracious as your good old English work experience youth.
All credit to those who play the foreigners: Gary Richards tactfully Teutonic as Dr Bessner, Joy Merriman damping down the hysterics as the fated Louise – a Frenchwoman and a maid, by Jove – and Anthony Houghton, who cleverly sidesteps the Egyptian stereotype as a Steward every mite as ungracious as your good old English work experience youth.

It takes time to get the plot under sail; by the interval it’s still a matter of Flesh Wound on the Nile. Things hot up in act two, with a couple of guns and a pair of deaths. The solution is ingenious if unlikely, and Christie manoeuvres her plot so that, though there’s no way you could work out the solution from the evidence given, it seems as if it could have been done.

Some performances might have been happier in a less intimate space – you’re so close you can almost smell the nail varnish. Period charm is played down, but not aggressively. Antony Edridge’s Smith, not noticeably aristo apart from his easy assurance, is a curiously laid-back radical while Sharon Gavin as Christina, young companion-servant to the appallingly snobbish Miss Ffoliot-Ffoulkes (Diana van Proosdy), manages to suffer her fool gladly while giving hope that she has the sense to escape eventually.

It takes time to get the plot under sail; by the interval it’s still a matter of Flesh Wound on the Nile. Things hot up in act two, with a couple of guns and a pair of deaths. The solution is ingenious if unlikely, and Christie manoeuvres her plot so that, though there’s no way you could work out the solution from the evidence given, it seems as if it could have been done.

Some performances might have been happier in a less intimate space – you’re so close you can almost smell the nail varnish. Period charm is played down, but not aggressively. Antony Edridge’s Smith, not noticeably aristo apart from his easy assurance, is a curiously laid-back radical while Sharon Gavin as Christina, young companion-servant to the appallingly snobbish Miss Ffoliot-Ffoulkes (Diana van Proosdy), manages to suffer her fool gladly while giving hope that she has the sense to escape eventually.

2001-07-25 17:44:40