AD | Tickets gifted in exchange of an honest review.
One of Agatha Christie's most famous works is brought to life on stage. Murder on The Orient Express will not just have Agatha Christie fans, but also murder mystery fans entertained throughout.
Murder on The Orient Express follows the winter of 1934, and the Orient Express is about to set off, the snows gets more and more battling and stops the train, and a murder takes place and quickly enough passengers become suspects and detective Hercule Poirot tries to crack the case before the train reaches its final destination.
Agatha Christie's Murder on The Orient Express is something that I'm not so familiar with, I only know one other of Agatha Christie's works which is The Mousetrap. The show is adapted for the stage by Ken Ludwig and is directed by Lucy Bailey. Murder on The Orient Express does keep you questioning for sure and brings the combination of murder and mystery to the stage really well.
Adapted to the stage by Ken Ludwig. Ludwig creates moments of great intensity, and moments of quickness but while also still being able to keep the level of some complexity to the book. Ludwig's combination of swift and intense dialogue is brilliant in act two when detective Hercule Poirot (Michael Maloney) who may or may not solve the case and remembers key moments that have happened. Ludwig's writing has good pace throughout that does keep you engaged in the story. I must admit at first I was going into the show thinking it would be more serious and didn't expect much comedy, or if any at all. But Ludwig took this away, and writes witty dialogue for characters and witty moments in general which resulted in the audience laughing especially at the dialogue of works by another famous author. Ludwig brings the characters to the stage well, with a good level of depth to them, with each individual character being written clearly having a distinctive personalities. Ludwig's adaption is nicely done and for someone who is not so familiar with Agatha Christie's works it doesn't feel too over complex in the dialogue that you would struggle with. Ludwig adapts a classic well with adding wit and some humour and overall is something for murder mystery fans.
Directed by Lucy Bailey, Bailey creates a brilliant opening scene directing dialogue towards the audience which added to movement director Leah Hausman's clever and tight movement which both together added a level of tension to the start of the show. Bailey's direction uses the shows sets turntable effectively at the start of the show, which feels like it puts Maloney's character in the centre and to me, I felt it was a good way of making the character watch each passenger. While Bailey's direction has great use of it's turntable, some of Bailey's transitions from scene to scene felt somewhat slightly awkward leaving the audience to watch the parts of the train being took apart and moved around the stage by members of the ensemble, personally, if there was a little bit more action than there was an opportunity maybe to use more of the video design or having suspects doing things to keep you guessing, it would of filled the transitions and keep the audience engaged rather than feeling a slight awkwardness. Though Bailey's direction does have a sense of skill and Bailey's direction keeps within designer Mike Britton's detachable compartments set pieces when they are all join together, which doesn't feel so static as it could of been with the amount of space, and as the set is detached and moved around to create various places on the train is still felt, we as an audience are in a small room. Bailey's direction is overall in general skilled plus giving a mix of tension and with also slight comedy at times.
Michael Maloney plays detective Hercule Poirot, Maloney has a strong and confident French accent throughout and delivers the character with intensity when questioning the passengers. Maloney's performance throughout is very good, with also having a good characterisation and plays off Monsieur Bouc, played by Bob Barrett, who gave great comedy in scenes with them both working well together. Maloney engages the audience from the first line direct to us and carries this across the duration of the show, plus Maloney shows detective Hercule Poirot's drive to solve the case. Maloney gives an impressive performance from start to finish.
Bob Barrett, plays Monsieur Bouc, Barrett delivers as previously mentioned comedy. Barrett gives a real impression of really wanting to help out an old friend to solve the case and you can see the work of Hercule Poirot's being admired throughout, you can clearly see the old friendship come out between them both, and it's nice to see this play out on stage.
The whole cast showed talented performances they all showed personality and good characterisation throughout, they all work well together to bring a classic alive on stage. For me notable performances come from Mila Carter, Debbie Chazen and Christine Kavanagh who all three show pleasing performances.
Mike Britton's design had small sized separate set pieces that could be moved around the dark empty stage that surrounded them, which could also be put together to make and reassemble the passengers compartments or attach together to make walkways that spanned the whole width of the Lyceum stage. The compartments felt simple but had to be for them to be able to be easily transformed into other places on the train, Britton's design is smartly done.
Murder on The Orient Express takes a famous work and delivers a guessing game. I enjoyed the overall true plot, it was very much unexpected plus a couple of bits of the humour that was written in. Again, for me if the transitions had been smoother and not distracting it would definitely help the show. Overall Murder On The Orient Express is filled with mystery which leaves you entertained.
★★★★
Murder on The Orient Express plays at the Sheffield Lyceum Theatre until Saturday 8th of February.
Comments