We’ve been to live theatre again for the first time in several months – the first of several visits we plan this autumn as we settle down here on the south coast. Our first sojourn was to the Devonshire Park Theatre to see Murder, Margaret and Me, a play about the friendship between comedy actress Margaret Rutherford and detective writer Agatha Christie.
It was thirty years since we’d been inside the Devonshire Park Theatre here in Eastbourne, last visiting towards the end of 1989 just before we moved northwards the following February. It’s a charming venue – built in the late Victorian period but subsequently remodelled in 1903 by the famous UK theatrical designer Frank Matcham. Like a lot of theatres of that era, it feels intimate despite having a capacity in excess of 900.
It was good to be back, and we spent a happy half-hour over a glass of wine in the bar reminiscing about productions we’d seen there – the first either of us could remember being Noël Coward’s Private Lives, starring Joanna Lumley and Michael Jayston. This was around 1981: it was a tour of the production starring Jayston and Maria Aitken that had originated at the Greenwich Theatre the previous year, before transferring into the West End. Joanna made a fine Amanda, so it was a great show, and the first of many memorable nights there.
Other highlights included Michael Frayn’s farce Noises Off, Alan Bennett’s Another Country and Not About Heroes, Stephen MacDonald’s acclaimed 1982 play about the meeting between the war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen at Craiglockhart Hospital in 1917. There were farces and thrillers galore to delight the summer audiences in those days too.
Last night’s production was a worthy addition to our memories of the venue. It was first seen at the Edinburgh Festival and also had a short West End run as part of the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the opening of The Mousetrap, the Agatha Christie play that has played in London’s West End continuously since 1952. Last night's play was also seen in 2018 at the New York Fringe Festival, where it was a great hit and won several awards.
It is 1960. Agatha Christie’s story Murder, She Said is to be filmed, and Margaret Rutherford is to star as the detective Miss Jane Marple. The two are equally reluctant to allow the casting to stand – Agatha Christie’s concern is that she does not think Rutherford is right for the part, but why is Margaret so unhappy? Surely it is a gift of a part for an actress about to turn sixty and who has spent her career playing eccentric characters? Is it snobbery, or what?
The play traces the development of the friendship between the two women on the set of the film – the first of four that would be made between 1961 and 1964. It focuses on Agatha’s determination to find out the cause of her friend’s reluctance to play Jane Marple. Using her powers of detection, Agatha eventually discovers Margaret’s secret, but in the process is forced to confront her own past and especially her own ten-day disappearance in 1926.
Despite its show business background, its period setting and its famous characters, the play has some strong messages for us all in contemporary life – especially about confronting our pasts and the nature of love. Despite their fame and success, both characters had difficulties in their lives, and Margaret Rutherford in particular, grappled with anxiety and depression, for ever fearful of inheriting the insanity that had plagued her father. The lengths to which Margaret and her husband went to keep her problems secret throughout her career was a stark contrast with today's growing openness about mental health issues.
The cast of three was excellent – led by Lin Blakely as Agatha Christie and with Sarah Parks as Margaret Rutherford and Gilly Tompkins as Jane Marple, who acts as a narrator and commentator. The stage design was a clever blend of fifties cosiness and the illusions created by a film set with two studio porters handling subtle scene changes as if they were on set.
It was a great night out – the only sadness being the number of empty seats in the theatre, which was barely a quarter full. A great shame – for all the attractions of satellite TV and internet streaming, there’s still nothing to beat a live show.