The Agatha Christie Challenge – The Mysterious Mr Quin (1930)

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STOP PRESS: The Agatha Christie Challenge is now available as a book in two revised volumes – details at the end of this blog post!

In which we meet Mr Harley Quin, enigmatic representative of the Commedia dell’Arte, who drifts in and out of Mr Satterthwaite’s life, as a catalyst for solving crimes and saving lives, the responsibility for which he hands over to Mr Satterthwaite, giving the old man a final purpose in life. It’s all highly mysterious and unusual; once more structured (like Partners in Crime) as a sequence of short stories that build up to an episodically narrated novel. Don’t worry if you haven’t read the book, I promise I won’t reveal any of its important secrets! Actually, as I was reading it I came to the conclusion that I hadn’t properly read it myself before. I had read a couple of the stories in another compilation (13 For Luck, which I may eventually get round to blogging), but this was my first proper exposure to The Mysterious Mr Quin per se. On the whole, it was an agreeable exposure, although with the occasional nadir along the way.

Again, like Partners in Crime, the stories first appeared in magazine format, either in The Grand magazine, The Story-Teller, or in Britannia and Eve magazine; all first appearing between 1924 and 1929. Christie really did spend those formative years trying out a number of different detectives; naturally, she’s largely known for Poirot and Marple but there are several other minor characters in her oeuvre too worth a re-read. Let’s take the stories in order and see how successfully they fill out into a “proper book”.

The Coming of Mr Quin

So what do we know of Mr Satterthwaite? We know what we read in the blurb – and it seems likely that we are meant to read this before we actually start reading the book. “Mr Satterthwaite is a dried-up elderly little man who has never known romance or adventure himself. He is a looker-on at life. But he feels an increasing desire to play a part in the drama of other people – especially as he is drawn to mysteries of unsolved crime. And here he has a helper – the mysterious Mr Quin – the man who appears from nowhere – who “comes and goes” like the invisible Harlequin of old. Who is Mr Quin? No one knows, but he is one who “speaks for the dead who cannot speak for themselves”, and he is also a friend of lovers. Prompted by his mystic influence, Mr Satterthwaite plays a real part in life at last, and unravels mysteries that seem incapable of solution.”

My two instant reactions to this are: a) Mr Satterthwaite is apparently 62 years old – in my book that does not make him elderly. However, I do accept that times have changed – in 1924 the average life expectancy for a male was 56; and b) if Mr Satterthwaite has always sat on the edge of life and never actually done anything, how come he is permanently in the company of interesting people? Surely they would have found him a very boring little man and never have invited him to their house parties? It’s a question that’s never really addressed.

I digress. The first tale sets us in one of those aforementioned house parties, where a gathering for New Year’s Eve becomes all reflective as they try to work out why their friend Derek Capel, who previously owned the house where they are all meeting, committed suicide ten years ago. Enter Mr Quin, in a blustery gale; “to Mr Satterthwaite, watching, he appeared by some curious effect of the stained glass about the door, to be dressed in every colour of the rainbow” – thereby establishing his motley, Harlequin-like, credentials. He says he is seeking refuge from the weather whilst his chauffeur is mending his car – just like the arrival of Mr Paravicini in The Mousetrap, if I remember rightly – and he leads the conversation into memories of that fateful night when Capel died. Theories are propounded, motives are examined; and a second suicide is, as a result, prevented. Mr Quin leaves as promptly as he arrives, and Mr Satterthwaite feels like he has finally achieved something.

Capel had said that he was “in the running for the Benedick stakes”. I’d not heard this phrase before – but a Benedick is a newly-married man, especially when he has long been a bachelor – no doubt, taken from the character in Much Ado About Nothing.

Both arsenic and strychnine get a mention, as they inevitably do with a Christie that was penned in or around 1924. She was fascinated by the stuff!

“The masculine side of Mr Satterthwaite spoke there, but the feminine side (for Mr Satterthwaite had a large share of femininity) was equally interested in another question.” Is Christie trying to tell us something indirectly about Mr Satterthwaite’s sexuality? I guess we’d better carry on reading to find out.

An enjoyable start to the book, and I found both Satterthwaite and Quin an interesting couple with whom to get acquainted. The writing at the end of the story became more suggestive and opaque and less “obvious” than usual. You may, or may not, think this is a good thing. Personally, it left me a little cold. Let’s see what happens with the next story.

The Shadow on the Glass

The next tale sets Mr Satterthwaite in another house party situation, observing a number of more glamorous women and go-getting men from his rather downtrodden station in life. There are a few passages where Christie quite subtly emphasises differences between Satterthwaite and the rest – like how he has to run (out of breath because he’s probably too portly) to keep up with the Big Game Hunter Major Porter, and how he is almost speechless with honour when Porter calls on him in desperation to do something to protect Mrs Staverton. You very much get the feel of a developing character and I rather enjoyed this story about intrigues within marriages set against a backdrop of a ghostly apparition on a window pane. And once again Mr Quin arrives, with a suggestion of surreal colour, asks some pertinent questions and reveals the secret to the mystery in a rather opaque manner.

It’s an interesting reminder of how revered Big Game Hunters were in those days. It was a sign of bravery, of virility; there are endless biographies of bloodthirsty colonels shooting anything that moved in the jungle which the general public a hundred years ago simply lapped up. Today they are people that society generally despises; come across a photograph of an American dentist with a dead jungle animal on Facebook and the likelihood is someone will be questioning the size of his manhood rather than dishing out plaudits. How times change.

The big game hunter reminds Lady Cynthia of a song that includes the lyrics “great big bears and tigers”. If you were curious to know their origin, the song in question is called “Come along with me” and is from a much forgotten old show entitled “The Orchid”, with words by Adrian Ross and music by Ivan Caryll, produced in 1903. Satterthwaite comes up with an odd line: “mine not to reason why, mine but to swiftly fly”. Not only is this a split infinitive (tut, tut) but it’s nothing like what I learned at the Dowager Mrs Chrisparkle’s knee: “ours not to reason why, ours but to do or die”. So which is it? The true quotation is: “Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die” and it’s from Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade. So where is Satterthwaite’s “mine but to swiftly fly” from? I haven’t a clue.

I like the fact that Satterthwaite is planning to go to Carlsbad for his liver. Today we know it as Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic, renowned for its spa and healing waters. I also liked how Christie unified this story with the opening tale by mentioning the Eveshams again – they played a more major role in that story, but here they are again, staying in that unlucky room shortly before they got divorced. You sense a whole parallel world moving along at the same time, which gives it a greater sense of being an episodic novel rather than just a collection of separate short stories. It would be rare for the Christie of this era not to give a disparaging mention to left wing subversives, and she doesn’t disappoint: “”Has it ever struck you, “ he said, “that civilisation’s damned dangerous?” “Dangerous?” Such a revolutionary remark shocked Mr Satterthwaite to the core.”

An entertaining story that drives the book forward at a satisfying pace. Will we get tired of Mr Quin just coming in to scenarios like this, or will we need him to become more of a rounded and regular character? Time will tell…

At the “Bells and Motley”

The “Bells and Motley” is the pub in the village of Kirtlington Mallet, where Mr Satterthwaite’s car breaks down again with a third puncture – that is unbelievably unlucky – and where he seeks refreshment only to discover that Mr Quin is already there waiting for him. Well, it is the “Bells and Motley” – where else would a harlequin go for a pint?

This is an introverted little tale where the two characters just talk over a cause célèbre that happened a few months previously – the mysterious disappearance (and presumed death) of one Richard Harwell, a brash and jovial huntsman of whom nobody knew much, and the suspects – his young wife, his gardener and his groom (horses, not marriage). As usual Mr Quin presses the right buttons in Satterthwaite’s imagination to solve the crime (if crime there be) from the comfort of the snug. It’s actually quite a clever little whodunit, that probably wouldn’t work in any other way except as a tale retold by third persons.

And we’re still learning more about Mr Satterthwaite; he is an epicure with his own cordon bleu chef (that explains his portly out-of-breath running in the previous story) and he isn’t very gracious with his chauffeur: “”you seem to think you can arrange everything, Masters,” said Mr Satterthwaite snappily.” I’m not sure he’s that nice a chap on the whole. Snappy at servants; easy to flatter if you’re an important person; but not having actually done much with his life.

Some references and facts to consider: the village of Kirtlington Mallet is unsurprisingly a creation of Christie, although there is of course both a Kirtlington and a Shepton Mallet. Ashley Grange – the Harwell’s home – was to be sold for £60,000 to Cyrus G Bradburn – given this was originally written in 1925, that converts to an equivalent sum of £2.5 million today. Nice. “Happy’s the wooing that’s not long doing” says Mr Satterthwaite, describing the brevity of Harwell’s engagement to Miss le Couteau. I thought that might be a quotation but apparently it’s an old proverb – not one that I’d heard of before – dating from the 16th century.

It’s quite amusing from the perspective of reading this book in the 21st century that Quin wants Satterthwaite to imagine they are in the year 2025, trying to solve a case that took place a hundred years previously. We very nearly are.

The Sign in the Sky

After the previous story, this is another in a very similar vein – Mr Satterthwaite has been observing a trial, and then later bumps into Mr Quin sitting at his favourite table in the Arlecchino restaurant in Soho – one again continuing the Harlequin theme. One wonders at this stage how many oblique ways Christie can refer to the Commedia dell’arte character. However, whereas the previous story knits up nicely and convincingly, this one is full of holes, IMHO. For example: how do we know the trains always run on time? Supposing another member of the household had a wristwatch? Sorry, Agatha, I expect better from you.

What she does achieve is to continue to fill out our understanding of Satterthwaite – now we know that he enjoys watching trials, and that femininity alluded to in the first story also gets further, dare we say, outing… “your sympathies were with the accused? Is that what you were going to say?” “I suppose it was. Martin Wylde is a nice-looking young fellow – one can hardly believe it of him.” “I’ve known a good many young men, and these emotional scenes upset them very much – especially the dark, nervous type like Martin Wylde.” And once again, we see how promptly Satterthwaite responds to Quin’s flattery: “…if anyone can show me that, it will be Mr Satterthwaite,” he murmured. Mr Satterthwaite gripped the table with both hands. He was uplifted, carried out of himself. For the moment, he was an artist pure and simple – an artist whose medium was words.”

Deering Vale, is, of course, imaginary; Banff in Canada is, of course, real. That’s quite a flight of fancy that Satterthwaite takes on a whim – getting a crossing to Canada, then going all the way over to the Rockies for a couple of days and then coming back. He’d have to have done it rapido in order to be back in time to save Wylde’s life. Both Wylde and Quin have considerable power over Satterthwaite in this tale. Actually the whole conversation where the Canadian link is mentioned, then dropped, then picked up again, and Satterthwaite goes quiet because he just knows deep inside he’ll have to go there, is all done with a very amusing lightness of touch. So my verdict on this one is: well written in all respects except the machinations of the plot.

The Soul of the Croupier

The next story is my favourite so far in the whole book. Satterthwaite finds himself (as you do) with the Riviera set in Monte Carlo, observing the goings on between an American lad (you can kind of imagine him being of the Gatsby set, at least in appearance) and the Countess Czarnova, the height of aristocracy (at least as far as the American is concerned). Add an American girl who is jealous of the guy’s infatuation with the (much) older Countess, a croupier who pays out the wrong winner, and – yes you guessed it – the appearance of Mr Quin, subtly glowing with motley colours, encouraging Satterthwaite to enter life’s drama rather than merely observing it on the sidelines. It was during this story that I started to get the feeling that Quin was actually part of Satterthwaite’s psyche, rather than an individual in his own right. It’s as though he represents a part of Satterthwaite that was hitherto missing – an element of soul, conscience, imagination, spirit… The two are definitely becoming one, because Quin appears already to know all of Satterthwaite’s own feelings and emotions.

Talking of which, we get even closer to what Christie refers to as Satterthwaite’s feminine side. It goes without saying that he would already have known Franklin Rudge, the American boy, being young and good looking. Satterthwaite’s ability to see through the Countess, for who she really is, is attributed by Christie to the fact that he “knew far more of feminine secrets than it is good for any man to know”. When Elizabeth Martin, the American girl, asks Satterthwaite why Rudge is so infatuated with the Countess, he replies “she’s got a very charming manner, I believe” – not “she’s got a very charming manner” which is what he would have said if he personally found her attractive. And the Countess can see right through Satterthwaite too: “”You are interested in that nice American boy, Mr Satterthwaite, are you not?” Her voice was low with a caressing note in it. “He’s a nice young fellow,” said Mr Satterthwaite, non-committally.” Satterthwaite’s observations about the young people holidaying in Monaco also make clear what we had previously suspected anyway, that the man’s an utter snob.

The Monte Carlo setting allows us to see Christie moralising again. Just as she was very anti-divorce in Partners in Crime, here she is very anti-gambling. Satterthwaite thinks of gamblers as “doomed souls who could not keep away”. The story requires that the Countess loses at the casino: “again and again she staked, only to see her stake swept away. She bore her losses well […] she staked en plein once or twice, put the maximum on red, won a little on the middle dozen and then lost it again, finally she backed manque six times and lost every time.” The story also allows her to give vent to her general mistrust of foreigners and slight antisemitic viewpoint. She describes some of the Countess’ former dalliances as being with “friends […] of Hebraic extraction, sallow men with hooked noses”; when Elizabeth and Franklin are talking at the end, he says “these foreigners – they beat the band! I don’t understand them. What’s it all mean, anyhow? […] Gee, it’s good to look at anything so hundred per cent American as you […] these foreigners are so odd.” There’s also a reference to Prohibition, which reminds us of Julius in The Secret Adversary.

Some other references: Radzynski is certainly an authentic surname although more Polish than Hungarian; there definitely was a King of Bosnia although the kingdom hasn’t existed since 1463. Although it sounds really credible, alas there isn’t a Sargon Springs anywhere in the US, it’s another of Christie’s inventions. And I’d never heard of a “Hedges and Highways” Party! The reference is in the Bible, Luke 14:23: “And the lord said unto the servant, go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.” This is following the refusal of three invitees to attend supper because they had other jobs on hand, so the servant went out and brought all the poor and lame in for supper… and there was still room.

Oh, and that 50,000 French Franc note? Probably worth about £40,000 today, unless I’ve got my conversions wrong.

The Man From The Sea

Another very notable story next, one with a very different atmosphere from any that have gone before; here there is no crime to solve as such, but suicides to prevent – two of them in fact. Satterthwaite is feeling very mortal in this tale – he reflects with some sadness on the passing of the years; he even witnesses a dog being killed by a car and takes it as evidence that happy life is fleeting and can be snuffed out in an instant. There’s also a further element of supernatural – over and above the regular reappearance of Mr Quin in a shimmer of motley – with an air of reincarnation at the end of the story that I found rather spooky.

Although this is the sixth story in the book, it was, in fact, the last to be written and originally published – first appearing in October 1929 in Britannia and Eve magazine. This in part may account for the discrepancy with Satterthwaite’s age – it clearly states that he is 69 years old. Yet in The Coming of Mr Quin, four years previous, he is 62. What happened to those missing three years! No wonder Satterthwaite feels old if he thinks he’s 69 when in fact he’s only 66. Satterthwaite’s femininity continues to be explored in the book – the mysterious Spanish lady explains that she can say anything to him because “you are half a woman. You know what we feel – what we think – the queer, queer things we do.” Christie also adds a nice aside which you could file under her “distrust of foreigners” heading, when the Spanish lady invites Satterthwaite to take tea with her. “She added reassuringly. “It is perfectly good tea and will be made with boiling water.”” Even today some of those European chappies just don’t know how to make a proper cuppa.

And it’s always entertaining to see Christie use one of her favourite words that has undergone a certain semantic change since the book was written: “While he was resolving things in his mind, the other spoke, realising somewhat belatedly that his single ejaculation so far might be open to criticism.”

A strange story, successful on the whole I think, although it made me feel uncomfortable rather than rewarded.

The Voice in the Dark

Satterthwaite is called on by an old aristocratic friend to investigate the apparent “voices” that her daughter is hearing – as Satterthwaite is bound to know occultists and mediums, he is the obvious person to help. But what at first might have been thought to be some supernatural nonsense – including a very credible séance scene – turns out to be murder in the old-fashioned way.

From the rigorous story of the croupier and the dreamy tale of the Spanish lady, this next story is a bit of a damp squib. It sets up as a good tale; although it doesn’t take a sleuth to guess what “give back what is not yours” refers to; and it leaves many loose ends untied, including exactly how did that séance work and whether there is some missing evidence about the chocolates. I get the feeling that Christie rattled off this one in a hurry. There is also the unfortunate continuity issue, with Satterthwaite recollecting that he and Quin last met in Corsica (in The World’s End, see below) which was the previous story in the order in which they were written but is four stories ahead in this book – that rather kills the sense of the volume developing as a satisfying whole.

In some respects this is classic Christie. There is an allusion to her favourite thing of all, poison, with the chocolates that are sent to Lady Stranleigh. She gets to dig in some further disapproval of divorce and everything that goes with it – Lady S’s interminable paperwork with lawyers and undesired reuniting with “Rudolf” is a nice case in point. There’s the fabulous, brief, characterisation of Lady S’s new beau – Bimbo (yes, that’s his name) and his delightful reply to the question: “what has the tennis been like?” (Answer: “septic”.)

Was there ever a ship called the Uralia? I don’t think so. I looked it up on the internet and found this cryptic definition, about which I have got, I freely admit, gentle reader, not a clue. But perhaps the most relevant aspect of the entire story is the little snapshot into Satterthwaite’s youth that suggests that perhaps he isn’t gay after all!

Not one of Christie’s best short stories.

The Face of Helen

Quite entertaining, rather sad, and, in the details, incredibly far-fetched, this story sees Satterthwaite in his box at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden looking down on a most beautiful girl, and then encountering her again with her boyfriend (not that Satterthwaite would ever say the word) and another admirer; there’s a Christie equivalent of a fight in the pub car park, followed by Satterthwaite interceding to help the girl – Gillian West – and then continuing to help her when the other admirer is jilted for the real boyfriend. Quin plays a somewhat lesser role in this story – almost significant by his absence when Satterthwaite hopes to meet him at the Arlecchino.

Christie continues to fill in the gaps of Satterthwaite’s younger days – he likes to visit the bluebells at Kew Gardens because it reminds him of a time when he was going to propose to a young lady there who sideswiped him by telling him all about the man she really loved; cue Satterthwaite subtly going into confidant mode and abandoning his true feelings. It also occurs to me how incredibly rich Satterthwaite must be. All this cavorting around Europe, staying in the best places, and now we realise he pitches up twice a week in his private box at Covent Garden, entertaining Countesses. That’s some level of independent wealth there.

A few things come to mind – the desire to go for coffee or lemonade during the interval at Covent Garden as opposed to the champagne and Pinot that it would be today, for example. I wonder when tastes changed? Probably with availability. Magical performer Yoaschbim is considered to be the second Caruso – the first, Enrico, died in 1921. I was shocked that Satterthwaite doesn’t like Cavalleria Rusticana as it’s the most delightful of operas – but not at all surprised that Quin favours Pagliacci – as the Harlequin character is the lover. Interestingly, one of Caruso’s most celebrated roles was as Pierrot. And forgive my smutty mind from finding this line amusing: “he was a gregarious little gentleman, and he liked filling his box with the elite of the great world…”

An interesting juxtaposition with The Man From The Sea, where Satterthwaite prevents two suicides; in this story he fails to prevent one.

The Dead Harlequin

An engrossing story this one, with some enjoyable characterisations – I thought Frank Bristow was a very realistic creation – and a good blend of whodunit and the supernatural. Satterthwaite is taken with a painting at an exhibition entitled The Dead Harlequin, a) because the Harlequin reminds him of Harley Quin and b) because he recognises the setting as The Terrace Room at Charnley, a house he knew and the site of an apparent suicide by the young Lord Charnley. Satterthwaite invites Bristow, the painter, to his house for dinner, also inviting Colonel Monkton, who was present when Charnley’s body was discovered. Two people seek to buy the painting off Satterthwaite and Mr Quin turns up in a spookily unexpected way – and of course disappears similarly at the end of the story.

Of course, there are no Harchester Galleries, and an internet search on Frank Bristow reveals a pigeon-fancier, so as usual this is all down to Christie’s fertile imagination. There’s no such house as Charnley, although priests’ holes are certainly real – in fact the old inn in which I was brought up as a youngster (built 1535) had one – frustratingly plastered over so we couldn’t get access to it. There’s a nice moment of Christie tongue-in-cheek where Bristow describes the circumstances of the death of Lord Charnley as “not a best seller mystery, is it?” And the Bokhara rug apparently was valued at £2000. That’s some expensive rug, as at today’s prices that would be the equivalent of almost £90,000. A lot of money for an item whose main purpose was to hide bloodstains.

Exciting and suspenseful, this is definitely one of Mr Satterthwaite’s best moments!

The Bird with the Broken Wing

This is another quite enjoyable and engrossing story but it also requires a number of leaps of faith. Satterthwaite decides to change his plans when a game of “table turning” provides him with a message – apparently from Mr Quin – that he should stay with Madge Keeley as originally invited. He attends her house party where he meets a number of people, one of whom is murdered overnight. The police are called, but Satterthwaite is able to use his little grey cells, if I may use the phrase, to solve the crime without having to discuss it with Quin first.

This is the only story in the collection that does not seem to have appeared in magazine format prior to publication; as a result, we have no way of dating it other than “1930 or before”. Satterthwaite meets and works with Inspector Winkfield, who says “it won’t be the first murder mystery you’ve helped us with. I remember the case of Mrs Strangeways”. Whilst Inspector Winkfield had previously appeared in “The Shadow on the Glass”, there is no other mention in the other stories of Mrs Strangeways; does that suggest maybe a lost or unpublished story?

This tale brings out some of Satterthwaite’s less attractive traits – he’s very snobbish and rather bitchy here, patronising people who sing songs about “my baby”, being very judgmental when he thinks Mrs Graham has been smoking, and being highly sniffy about one of the guests: “her name seemed to be Doris, and she was the type of young woman Mr Satterthwaite most disliked. She had, he considered, no artistic justification for existence. “ As for Quin, he wins the prize for most ethereal character ever in this story, somehow communicating his concerns about Madge through a Ouija-type game; then later appearing to Satterthwaite on a train, who closes his eyes to imagine something and then opens them to find he has gone. He really takes on a dream identity in this book. But that Ouija game… assuming it’s balderdash, how was it that “the spirit” knew to bash out Quin’s name and then start describing Madge’s address? Even if you believe in ghosts, Quin wasn’t (apparently) dead! Talk about loose ends!

Of Mabelle, Christie writes: “she might have been one of those creatures who are only half-human – one of the Hidden People from the Hollow Hills.” Today that’s a pretty obscure reference, but I can only assume it is from the programme notes written to accompany the first performance (1910) of Arnold Bax’s symphonic poem “In The Faery Hills”. In it he describes how he had sought “to suggest the revelries of the ‘Hidden People’ in the inmost deeps and hollow hills of Ireland.”

The World’s End

Eleventh story in and I got the feeling of some barrel-scraping going on here. A rather long-winded and pointless tale that eventually gets started, after an inordinate amount of scene-setting, where yet another young person who might be tempted into suicide is averted from the act, this time by a third party who reveals the secret of an Indian Box. To be fair, there are a couple of interesting characters – the Duchess of Leith is well described and fleshed out, and Naomi Carlton Smith, the young attitudinal artist, makes a very good contrast with Satterthwaite’s comfortable and respectable world. There are some enjoyable exchanges between the two on the subject of art – the Duchess knows what she likes and she likes what she knows. But on the whole I found this immensely tedious and artificial.

A couple of references and explanations – the Duchess says Satterthwaite can sit on the dickey, which isn’t an insult; the dickey was an extra foldaway seat hidden in the luggage compartment of some older cars. No wonder Satterthwaite doesn’t sound too chuffed at the prospect. The story takes place in Corsica (for no particular reason that I could identify) and the final scene takes place at a Casse-Croûte which is like a lunch/sandwich bar. Unusually for Christie, she places this story at a specific location – Coti Chiaveeri, or as it is known today, Coti-Chiavari, a tiny Corsican village on the south west coast of the island.

This is the story that originally came before The Voice in the Dark – creating the continuity issue explained earlier. Considering the stories leading up to this one – this is definitely something of a disappointment.

Harlequin’s Lane

And so we come to the final tale, where Satterthwaite is staying at yet another house party but this time with people he doesn’t really associate with; the address of the property is Harlequin’s Lane, which Mr Quin (for, surprise, he is there too) says belongs to him. An extra-marital affair and a concealed identity figure in another rather sad story that has an unhappy ending.

But more than anything, you get a feeling that Satterthwaite and Quin are somehow two parts of the same whole, a symbiotic relationship where Satterthwaite gains insight and the ability to participate in the world through Quin’s influence, and where Quin gains a physical presence that otherwise he might not have. This final story seems extremely spooky and supernatural – Mrs Denham more or less tells Satterthwaite that they both know Quin is a fantasy.

There’s an excellent description of how Satterthwaite feels dead and worn out in comparison with life going on around him: “He felt suddenly rather old and out of things, a little dried-up wizened old fogey of a man. Each side of him were the hedges, very green and alive.”

As an end to the book it’s a rather misty conclusion; hard to pin down, definitely leaving the gate open for more (although there wasn’t much more to come) – perhaps ending more with a whimper than a bang, but that’s probably in keeping with the rest of the book. Satterthwaite and Quin get under your skin; it’s a fictional relationship that stays with you long after you read the final page.

All that remains is for me to give this an overall satisfaction rating of 7/10. It’s very enjoyable, but the short story format doesn’t work as well for me as the “proper novel”. And there’s a supernatural element and a number of untied loose ends that don’t really work. But the characterisation is fascinating! And just to keep you fully informed, my edition illustrated at the top of the page is Fontana Paperback, priced 3/6, first edition in this format (1965), with a striking cover by an unnamed artist.

With the next book in the Agatha Christie Challenge, our beloved writer returns to the novel format; not only that, it’s the debut of one little old lady by the name of Miss Marple. The book is Murder at the Vicarage, and if you’d like to read it too, I’ll blog about it in a few weeks’ time. In the meanwhile, happy sleuthing and keep on Christie-ing!

 

If you enjoy my Agatha Christie Challenge, did you know it is now available as a book? In two revised volumes, it contains all my observations about Christie’s books and short stories, and also includes all her plays! The perfect birthday or Christmas gift, you can buy it from Amazon – the links are here and here!

Review – Love’s Labour’s Lost, Oxford Shakespeare Company, Wadham College Oxford, 6th August 2016

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I can’t imagine how many times I’ve started a review of an Oxford Shakespeare Company production with the observation that it is a sheer pleasure and a privilege to sit in the gardens of beautiful Wadham College, armed with one’s picnic and bottle of Prosecco, sprawled out on a rug, having already bagsiesed one’s front row seats for yet another delightful OSC production. If that number of times = x, then this year we’re looking at x+1. And if that’s a rather pompous and overly scholastic way of looking at it, then that’s absolutely perfect for this much overlooked early Shakespearean comedy that makes fun of (inter alia) scholasticism and its practitioners. This year, Mrs Chrisparkle and I were joined not only by Lady Duncansby and her butler Sir William, but also by our nieces, Secret Agent Code November and Special Agent Code Sierra together with their Mum and Dad. Definitely fun for all the family.

I’ve only seen Love’s Labour’s Lost twice before, both times at the Pendley Shakespeare Festival near Tring – and, curiously enough, the second occasion was on 6th August 1998, exactly 18 years to the day before we saw this Oxford Shakespeare Company production. Well, I thought it was interesting anyway. You know how most Shakespearean comedies have four couples (often one very senior in status, and one very lowly) and at the end they all get together and marry? Well that’s exactly what you think is going to happen in LLL, but just at the last minute a messenger brings bad news that puts an end to all the jollity and causes the females to go back to the traditional courtly requirements of their suitors; namely that they should pine away in abstinence for a year, before the ladies will consider their suits in earnest. The words of Mercury are indeed harsh after the songs of Apollo. The labour of love is lost.

In a nutshell, the men have forsworn (again inter alia) the company of women for three years in the pursuit of learning and all round betterment. Therefore, there is much fun to be had by ridiculing their hapless attempts to keep their inability to stop thinking with their dicks when by chance they meet the Princess of France and her Ladies in waiting. I’m sorry if that was a little crude for you, but Shakespeare is very keen to show the juxtaposition between courtly and non-courtly behaviour. There’s a big contrast between the wannabe courtly behaviour of the nobles, and the nipple-tassle-twirling antics of the country wench Jaquenetta and her lascivious f-buddy Costard the Clown.

Added to this, somewhere between these two extremes, you find Don Adriano de Armado, the fantastical Spaniard, with pretensions to nobility but with a liability to indulge his frankly disgusting shoe fetish (ladies in the front row watch out) and a desire to, above all, get his leg over. Yes, gentle reader, this really is Shakespeare at his least politically correct. It’s a battle royale between the courtly, ephereal love and wham bam thank you ma’am. There were times when the Special Agent wanted the earth to open up and swallow her as she is of that age where the mention of anything sexual in the presence of her relatives is the epitome of embarrassment. How we tittered at her discomfort.

One of the trademarks of an Oxford Shakespeare Company production – especially the comedies – is that you know it’s going to be played for laughs. Unusually for us, this time we attended an evening production, which means the second act takes on a more mysterious vibe, with garden shadows emphasised by the artificial lighting on the stage, as the August night begins to draw in. Nevertheless, this did not impinge upon the general level of hilarity that had been emanating from the stage all evening. Nicholas Green’s production is set in the 1970s, which gives the costume department the enormous fun of finding really tasteless 70s outfits for the guys to wear – the girls were wearing largely timeless elegant/trendy clothes depending on the scene. The 70s were my teenager years, gentle reader, and for me Adrian Lillie’s costume design was a delightful nostalgic trip down Memory Lane. Primarily, I was really jealous of Berowne’s double-denim look; that was me down to a tee. I also always wanted a safari jacket like Boyet’s, although I wouldn’t have chosen a lilac one like his. Whilst the Secret Agent couldn’t contain her laughter at how appalling the styles were, I was just wondering how much weight I would have to lose to be able to fit the King of Navarre’s rather trendy brown striped flares. (Answer: quite a lot.)

Another trademark of the OSC is their inventive use of music, where sections of the text suddenly become part of a song rather than just the simple spoken word. This production isn’t quite Love’s Labour’s Lost – The Musical, but it’s not far from it. Many of the actors are dab hands with their instruments too, and there’s a lot of entertaining guitar work throughout the show. I was particularly impressed with the very funky finale comprising When Icicles Hang By The Wall and Other Greatest Hits. Simple staging with a few plinths and a set of stairs to nowhere admirably recreated both the King of Navarre’s palace and the parkland outside. As usual, a few liberties were taken with the text, including making Nathaniel a black-ballooned mute (saves on learning the words after all), and making Dull the Constable a WPC (women can be thick too). Costard enlists the help of a front-row theatregoer with reading the letters that both Berowne and Don Armado have entrusted him to deliver (to the wrong recipients, naturally) and when his mistake comes to light he blames the poor chap in the front row (“and that goes for you too, Peter!”)

The four noblemen bring a whiff of caviar with them as the four frozen Muscovites, all beards and Cossacks and so nearly breaking into a chorus of Kalinka. The ludicrousness of Berowne being able to hide on stage to observe his three companions individually sighing for love is highlighted by his standing on a plinth and hiding behind his guitar (not much of a hiding place, to be fair); and Jaquenetta raises the spirits and much more besides of the King when she addresses him, with her knee rubbing up and down his groin so that he loses his voice. As I said – played for laughs. And it all works tremendously well – this is just about the most accessible and understandable LLL you’ll ever see, and I’d forgotten what a really funny play it is.

Then of course there is the cast of ten young actors who throw their heart and soul into it and give some terrific performances. Berowne (what is it with this calling him Biron in the programme?) is a gift of a role and Dominic Rye seizes all the opportunities to bring out the comedy and pathos of the character. He’s a lazy self-indulgent oaf, and a hypocrite; but also a rather touching wooer and prone to vulnerability when his lady looks the other way; a real Everyman character and you really identify with him. Owen Pullar, too, does a great job of bringing the King to life, emphasising at first his nobility but quickly contrasting that with his all too human frailties. His scene welcoming the Princess of France to his palace was hilarious, saying she can’t actually come inside because of the oath he has sworn, but nevertheless, here’s the palace, ta-daa!!

Victoria Blunt’s Princess is a very classy act, a natural leader for her ladies in waiting, outwardly expecting the respect that goes with her status, but inside behaving badly just like one of the girls; until Mercade brings news of her father’s death, at which point she instantly grows up and matures. It’s a really strong performance. She’s also hilarious as the slutty Jaquenetta, silently taking the mickey out of all the respectable people, encouraging one of the men in the front row to read her letter just as she stuffs it down her cleavage.

Alice Coles – Viola in last year’s Twelfth Night – doubles up as a beautiful and almost demure Lady Maria and a spirited gutsy Moth (that’s the character, not an example of Lepidoptera). Kirsten Obank is a refined Lady Katharine and a delightfully dull Dull; and Georgina Hellier is full of allure as Lady Rosaline, with all the chutzpah and togetherness you’d need if you were going to be in charge of Berowne for the rest of your life. Guido Garcia Lueches brings great comic skill and verbal shenanigans to the role of Don Armado, part Latino Romeo, part Pinochet, spitting his sibilants in the face of all and sundry. He actually reminded me of the young Brian Rix. He also played a very studious looking Dumain, although you sensed he was never going to be a Straight A Student.

Thomas Judd is a hilarious Costard, delightfully gangly and stupid, giggling when he should have been paying attention, like the naughtiest boy in the school; playing Pompey with all the dignity he could muster (not much.) Christopher Laishley is a splendidly pompous and big-headed schoolteacher as Holofernes (despite assaulting me under the chin) as well as doubling up as Lord Boyet, frantically trying to keep a bunch of schoolgirls out of harm’s way; and George Whitehead is wonderfully wet-behind-the-ears as the lovelorn Longueville and the dark menacing presence of Mercade.

We all absolutely loved it; for most of the evening it was Laugh Out Loud On Repeat. Great rapport with the crowd (it was totally packed last Saturday night), a lovely sense of the occasion and, I should point out, a technically perfect performance by everyone. We’ve caught this near the end of the run, you have just until 19th August to catch it – but you surely should as it’s one of the funniest Shakespeare productions I’ve ever seen. Huge congratulations to all!

The Agatha Christie Challenge – Partners in Crime (1929)

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STOP PRESS: The Agatha Christie Challenge is now available as a book in two revised volumes – details at the end of this blog post!

In which we meet again Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, now six years into their happy ever after marriage – him relaxed, her bored – until their old friend Mr Carter installs them in Blunt’s Brilliant Detectives Detective Agency, where they solve a number of varied crimes whilst keeping a watch out for anything to do with the number 16… Feel free to read this blog even if you haven’t read the book – I shan’t give any of the games away! This is a slightly odd book, as it purports to be a series of separate short stories, but they follow on chronologically to make one novel, just with individual tales told episodically. I’ve split the stories up individually to look at – but in fact, you could just as easily take the whole book as one amorphous blob.

As in the earlier collection of short stories, Poirot Investigates, there’s very little time for niceties as our gallant heroes get on with solving sixteen crimes with effortless ease. The stories had all been originally published between 1923 and 1928, principally in The Sketch magazine, which is where the Poirot Investigates stories also first saw the light of day. The twist – if you can call it that – with this selection is that Tommy and Tuppence solve each of the cases in the style of popular fictional detectives of the day – a kind of art recreating art/pop will eat itself situation. I can imagine that, at the time, it would have added to the fun of the book to note the parallels between Christie’s stories and the fictional detectives to whom she pays tribute. 87 years later, however, when very few people know these other detectives, the in-jokes and the references are largely lost and today the structure is sadly a bit of a bore. As I said earler, I’m going to take them one by one and look at each one separately, pointing out any of Christie’s usual themes and idiosyncrasies – and don’t worry, I won’t reveal the intricacies of whodunit!

A Fairy in the Flat/A Pot of Tea

The first two chapters of the book serve as an introduction and the first case for Blunt’s Brilliant Detectives. This is a very gentle, lightweight introduction indeed, as Tuppence can solve the case of where is the missing Jeanette without getting up from her desk. There’s not a lot for me to comment on really; Albert, their young lad friend who ended up being their assistant in The Secret Adversary, is still on the scene, doing his best to be of service. In this introduction he is said to be recreating the style of a Long Island butler – and I wasn’t quite sure what the reference was. I don’t think it’s anything more than the fact that Long Island was (is?) rather prosperous and posh and that everything would have been done with style and elegance. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby was written around the same time.

The eponymous fairy refers to the scandal at the time about the Cottingley fairies, which so interested Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – that’s why Tuppence suggests writing to him.

When I wrote my blog about The Secret Adversary, I tried to ascertain if Christie gave us any clues as to the ages of our two heroes. T&T were described as having “united ages” which “would certainly not have totalled forty-five”. That book was written in 1922; and although Partners in Crime wasn’t published in book form until 1929, this short story was first published (with the title Publicity) in The Sketch on 24th September 1924. So when Tommy describes his staff (Tuppence and Albert) as neither of them being over 25 years old, he’s being consistent!

It’s clear that the vast majority of cases that a private detective would have been asked to undertake would be to gain evidence in divorce cases. Tommy and Tuppence make much of the fact that that would be boring. They obviously disapprove, not only because it’s unadventurous work, but also because they find it distasteful. Tuppence comes across as surprisingly ill-tempered when she talks of divorce as the growing “divorce evil”. I expect she is referring to The Matrimonial Causes Act 1923, which put men and women on an equal footing for the first time, enabling either spouse to petition the court for a divorce on the basis of their spouse’s adultery. For a successful case, you had to prove the deed, hence the popularity of the private detective.

Apparently the basis for this first story is Malcolm Sage, Detective, by Herbert Jenkins; a jolly, but essentially flimsy, start to the book.

The Affair of the Pink Pearl

The next story concerns the apparent theft of a pink pearl from a well-to-do American lady at a house party. There are plenty of enjoyable red herrings and some wonderfully Christie-esque suspects including a socialist (gasp) and a kleptomaniac member of the aristocracy (double gasp). But of course, not everything is as it seems.

It’s in this story, first published in the Sketch on 1st October 1924, that Tommy and Tuppence start to echo the detective fiction heroes in earnest. Tommy decides he will be Dr Thorndyke, the creation of British detective writer R Austin Freeman. We can consider him an early forensic science detective – a Quincy for the 1920s – and he always had his lab technician, Nathaniel Polton, in tow. I would say that the character is rather out of favour at the moment. However, in an almost “note to self”, Christie calls on Tommy to encourage Tuppence to use her little grey cells – of course Poirot’s catchphrase – and you can just imagine her rather self-conscious delight at doing so.

There are a few references to check out: the scene of the crime is The Laurels, Edgeworth Road, Wimbledon. There is an Edgeworth Road, but it’s nearer to the Oval cricket ground as opposed to Wimbledon. Lady Laura Barton is said to be the daughter of the late Earl of Carrowway – again this appears to be genealogy of pure Christie imagination. Tommy bluffs his way past Colonel Kingston Bruce with a reference to the case of Rex v Bailey, which the Colonel swallows hook, line and sinker. But is this a famous case? Doubtless there will have been Rex v Bailey cases but I don’t think Tommy was that knowledgeable about them.

There are also a couple of delightful lines and a very interesting example of linguistic semantic change: “I must explain […] that the pendant consisted of two small diamond wings and a big pink pearl depending from them.” What a charming old use of “depending” – that must have been pretty archaic even then. The Colonel doesn’t hold back from his description of Mr Rennie: “A most pestilential fellow – an arrant socialist. Good looking, of course, and with a certain specious power of argument, but a man, I don’t mind telling you, whom I wouldn’t trust a yard. A dangerous sort of fellow.” And there’s the lovely overheard quote: “you know perfectly well, Mother […] that she did bring home a teaspoon in her muff.” I sincerely hope the muff in question was a small cylindrical fur cover in which one rests one’s hands for warmth.

An amusing, interesting and nicely written case, with a surprise and sudden ending.

The Adventure of the Sinister Stranger

After the smartness of the previous story, this is a rather bumbling, uninteresting and obvious story of espionage. It’s the first appearance of one of the blue Russian letters that Carter had told them to expect, which provides much of the purpose and motive for the story. It was first published in the Strand Magazine on 22nd October 1924, showing a deviation in the order of stories from their original magazine publication to their appearance in Partners in Crime. The two stories that follow in the book originally preceded Sinister Stranger in the magazine.

The detective writer to which this story pays homage is Valentine Williams, creator of the young British Officer Desmond Okewood; his book The Man with the Clubfoot is clearly on Tuppence’s mind after Dr Bower has left them. “”Well, Tuppence, old girl, what do you think of it?” “I’ll tell you in one word,” said Tuppence. “Clubfoot!” “What?” “I said Clubfoot! My study of the classics has not been in vain. Tommy, this thing’s a plant. Obscure alkaloids indeed – I never heard a weaker story.””

Just a couple of references to check out: Dr. Bower’s practice is at The Larches, Hangman’s Lane, Hampstead Heath. Hangman’s Lanes are quite common in the UK, but none in Hampstead I’m afraid. This address is contradicted and the new suggestion is 16 Westerham Road, Finsbury Park. Again no luck tracing that, but there is a Westerham Road in Walthamstow.

You don’t often get references to vitriol nowadays. Vitriol today is when someone spouts a lot of angry stuff because things haven’t gone their way. Christie’s vitriol was the real deal – Sulphuric Acid. Yes good old H₂SO₄ was heading Tommy’s way if he didn’t think quick. (He did.)

There’s a little of the contemporary anti-Germanic feel; Dr Bower is revealed as Dr Bauer – the same slip of the typewriter appears in The Seven Dials Mystery – and one of the baddies in the story cries out “Gott! What cowards are these English”. Not very subtle really.

A very bland little tale. Suffice to say, that as I read it, I solved it before Tommy did.

Finessing the King/The Gentleman Dressed in Newspaper

An enjoyable little story but not one that really makes you sit up and take notice. Tuppence is bored and wants to go dancing and has seen an advertisement in the newspaper that will justify their appearance at the Three Arts Ball. It then becomes one of those stories where everyone is masked and in fancy dress, so that it’s hard to work out who killed who, and why. Nevertheless, our magnificent duo, with an eye to Isabel Ostrander’s detective Tommy McCarty and his sidekick, Denis Riordan, a fireman, work it out. That’s why Tuppence humiliates Tommy into wearing a fireman’s outfit for the ball.

Not much to discuss here. The cover illustration of my copy of the book (Fontana, 3rd impression, 1971) by Tom Adams depicts the Queen of Hearts with a dagger through her heart, thus representing this story in a manner that gives it more excitement and style than perhaps it merits! The Three Arts Ball certainly existed as an annual event, held more often than not at a swanky London venue.

From a language point of view, we get a rare chance to see in full the “red herring” allusion that we all know and love. “”Aren’t you clever?” said Tuppence. “Especially at drawing red herrings across the track.”” The original idea was that by drawing red herrings across the track you create a false scent to be followed. I’d never come across the full allusion before.

Having agreed in the opening part of the book that neither Tommy nor Tuppence can still be over 25, Tuppence accuses Tommy of being 32 in this book. Whether that was a Christie error, an annoyed suggestion by Tuppence that he’s acting like an old man, or whether he really is 32, I guess we’ll never know.

The Case of the Missing Lady

This little story sees Tommy pretending to be Sherlock Holmes, including excruciating playing on the violin and preposterous guesswork about their client’s background – which all turns out to be true. Soon our heroes are trying to hunt for his inamorata, the missing Lady Hermione. And I shall say no more about the plot because there isn’t really anything else I can say that wouldn’t give the game away. Suffice to say, again it’s mere confection in comparison with some other Christie short stories.

The story has echoes of Conan Doyle’s Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax, but reading it won’t really prepare you for this story. It does, however, have one classic line: “Fat women and fat dogs are an abomination unto the Lord – and unfortunately they so often go together.” For other references: The Honourable Hermione is said to be the daughter of Lord Lanchester – who doesn’t seem to exist anywhere else other than in a 2012 Mills and Boon romance by Linda Sole. Lady Susan Clonway lives in Pont Street, which does exist – a fashionable address near Harrods. And there is the town of Maldon. Two of them apparently; one in Surrey, and one in Sussex. The one in Surrey is really Malden; the one is Sussex doesn’t exist. However, there is one in Essex to which she doesn’t refer.

Blindman’s Buff

And so it goes on; another short story where Tommy is playing at being a fictional detective, this time the Blind Problemist Thornley Colton, the invention of writer Clinton H Stagg who died in 1916 aged just 27. Much of the early part of the story is taken up with Tommy’s learning how to “play blind” which today comes over as being rather unpleasant trivialising of a serious disability. The story doesn’t stand successfully by itself, you would have to have read the entire volume so far to appreciate the references and motivations of the characters – and actually, I found this story immensely tedious, ridiculously fanciful and borderline sick (in the old fashioned sense).

Just a couple of references – a character declares himself to be the Duke of Blairgowrie, a picturesque market town in Perthshire; but of course in real life there is no such dukedom. Tommy and the Duke get into “a smart landaulette”. I’ve never heard of that term before. Of course we all know and love the Royal State Landaus used for pomp and ceremony occasions – so one can guess what a landaulette is. In fact, it’s more like a convertible limousine of the era. Very smart!

Not a story to dwell on, in my humble opinion.

The Man in the Mist

Finally, a much more substantial short story, with a proper build up, a proper crime and a lovely piece of light dawning as Tommy tries to solve it. This story is told in the style of G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories – at least, Tommy is dressed like Father Brown for most of the time, and so adopted the good Father for this story.

This gave rise to some anti-Catholic rhetoric from Mrs Honeycott: “To begin with, you’ll excuse me if I say I don’t hold with the Roman Catholic religion. Never did I think to see a Roman Catholic priest in my house. But if Gilda’s gone over to the Scarlet Woman, it’s only what’s to be expected in a life like hers…” The rather stern Mrs H also diatribes against divorce – “Divorce is sinful” she avows, much like Tuppence’s distaste for the subject in the early pages of the book. She also equates theatre with wickedness, so she’s a pretty outdated old stick.

Other interesting observations of the times come from the fact that it’s obviously a good old pea-souper that obscures Morgan’s Avenue in the quaint village of Adlington – we don’t get those anymore. We also don’t get prejudice against people writing “pacifist poems”, even if it does make the hairs on Tuppence’s militaristic back stand on end. It’s also a world where use of the words “Hell” and “Damn” are seen as worthy of apologising to strangers for. How times change.

Adlington Hall really exists! The village of Adlington is near Macclesfield, Cheshire and was certainly in existence at the time Christie wrote the book. However, it’s hardly a short hop back to London, which is what the book implies. It doesn’t boast a Morgan’s Avenue, although there is a Morgan Avenue not too far away in Warrington.

A much more entertaining and rewarding tale than the majority of others so far.

The Crackler

This story, in the style of Edgar Wallace, isn’t bad, although it’s not exactly riveting either. Our tempestuous twosome are on the hunt for the source of counterfeit currency, and, as usual, Tommy gets lured into a trap but is saved by the bell.

It’s named The Crackler because that’s the name Tommy makes up to describe someone who makes nice fresh, crackly, counterfeit notes. He’s 100% sure the word will end up in the dictionary as a result of his brave sleuthing. He’s wrong – it hasn’t. Tuppence is still confused by “busies” and “noses”. Busies is still certainly a slang term for the police; never actually heard anyone use the word “noses” in this context though – but my OED confirms it’s a late 18th century term for a spy or an informer. Ryder refers to cash as “oof”, which I’d certainly never heard before – and that’s a 19th century word derived from two Yiddish words meaning “cash on the table” – i.e. gambling money.

“Marguerite Laidlaw […] was a charming creature, with the slenderness of a wood nymph and the face of Greuze picture.” Who? That would be Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725 – 1805), a French painter of portraits, genre scenes, and history painting. Pardon my ignorance.

One of those silly, out-of-context lines that only Christie can write, that sounded perfectly ok back in the day but now takes on a new meaning: “Major Laidlaw is pretty well known […] Men in the know look queer when he’s mentioned.”

The Sunningdale Mystery

Among the better tales in this book. Tommy takes on the mantle of Baroness Orczy’s Old Man in the Corner, with Tuppence as journalist Polly Burton. I’ve only read one “Old Man in the Corner” story, and Polly didn’t appear in it, so I can’t vouch for Christie’s veracity. This is a tale of a man found stabbed with a hatpin (if ever there was a classic Christie weapon, there’s one) on the links at Sunningdale Golf Club.

It’s unusual for Christie to set a story so firmly in a real location. Sunningdale is, of course, a proper golf club and a pretty swish one to boot. The Christies were actually living in the village at the time, and Archie was a member of the club, so it’s written with a certain insider knowledge. There’s even reference to a footpath that leaves the course and comes out on the road to Windlesham. I reckon you could pinpoint that location with dead accuracy.

Other interesting references to note are that the story takes place in an ABC shop. What’s one of those, I hear you ask? They were a chain of tea shops, first launched in the 1860s, and that died out in the 1950s. The ABC of the title referred to the Aerated Bread Company. Catchy! I’m no golfer, and I didn’t recognise the verb to foozle, as in “not only did he foozle his drive badly…” The OED tells me it was a late 19th century term to make a bad job of something (especially in golf). It’s also rather sweet to think that there was a time when you could get cheap tickets to London on a Wednesday, just because it was a Wednesday. Such innocent times.

Tommy and Tuppence manage to solve the crime without having to get up from their tea and buns.

The House of Lurking Death

And here comes another pretty good whodunit short story, with a decent crime, a decent motive and a decent (albeit rapid) denouement. Here Tommy envisages himself as A E W Mason’s detective Inspector Hanaud, considered by many to be an influence on Christie in the creation of Hercule Poirot – although apart from them both being francophones, I’m not yet convinced of too much similarity. Tommy’s last words to Tuppence at the end of this story are a direct quote from Mason’s first Hanaud novel, At the Villa Rose. I have to say those first few pages, where Tommy is practising his French style, make pretty cringily embarrassing reading. In a complete aside, Hanaud’s offsider, Ricardo, was played by Austin Trevor in Mr Trevor’s film debut in 1930; and he also went on to be the first ever Poirot on screen – in Alibi, a 1931 film based on The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I met Mr Trevor when I was 8 years old, as I collected autographs at the stage door of the Lyric Theatre in London, where he was appearing in the play Oh Clarence! I remember him being a charming old gentleman.

Poison in chocolates, how delicious. If you’ve read any of my other Christie blogs, you’ll know that I look for evidence of “Christie the Poisons Expert” in every book, because, deep down, she loves it. This story has plenty of poison. There’s (allegedly) arsenic in the chocolates that made everyone sick at Thurnly House before Lois Hargreaves comes to call on T&T. Later there is a suggestion of ptomaine poisoning in the figs – I’d never heard of ptomaine, and that’s because it’s now recognised not as a poison per se but as part of the general field of food poisoning. However, the real culprit in this story is ricin, the product of the castor oil plant, much favoured by the old KGB. Let’s not go there.

Thurnly. Does it exist? No. An invention of Christie’s. However, I did enjoy the little diatribe against those damn lefties again, ascribing the sending out of poisoned chocolates as “socialist agitation”. I suppose the most in-depth references in this story are those Hell and Brimstone quotations from the Bible that Hannah the maid keeps quoting. The first one is from Psalm 140, verse 10, but Hannah misquotes it slightly; the others are variously from the Psalms and the Gospel of St John.

The Unbreakable Alibi

Blunt’s Detectives are challenged to prove which of two contradictory alibis is false – how can one person be in London but also in Torquay at the same time? This is a jauntily written, entertaining little tale, but terribly easy to guess the solution that Tommy and Tuppence seem to take ages discovering. And of course, the reader is right, so the mini-denouement becomes a bit of a damp squib.

Tommy takes the guise of Inspector French from the novels of Freeman Wills Crofts, of whom I know nothing, so I can’t tell if it’s well done or not! Apparently French was good at sorting out alibis, hence Tommy’s choice. There is some nice talk of astral travel which is a concept I haven’t come across for decades – I convinced myself that I had done it one night when I was a child. I probably didn’t.

Other than that there are a few references to check out – the Bon Temps Restaurant in London (there isn’t one at the moment, at any rate) ; The Duke’s Theatre (there’s the Duke of York’s but that’s all) ; The Castle Hotel in Torquay (there’s a Castle pub, but I doubt it’s the same) ; and Clarges Street London – that certainly exists, but I don’t think there’s a Number 180.

Montague Jones refers to his mother as “The Mater”, just as John Cavendish does in The Mysterious Affair at Styles and our own Tommy does in The Secret Adversary. All peas from the same pod, I think.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect about this story is that it was written four years after the others, in 1928.

The Clergyman’s Daughter/The Red House

And this story was the first to be written, published in the Strand magazine in December 1923, only a short while after the publication of The Secret Adversary. In it, Tommy decides to take on the mantle of detective Roger Sheringham from the novels of Anthony Berkeley. Again, I’ve not read his works, so I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the homage.

The story is a relatively lightweight affair about a house that is up for sale, and the reason why people are desperate to buy it is because of buried treasure. The grand total of treasure is £25,200, which in 1923 was the equivalent of a majestic £10.6m. The Clergyman’s daughter who will take ownership of the tidy sum will be doing relatively well.

The story has a cryptogram to solve, which Tommy and Tuppence manage through a combination of hard work and good luck, about as opaque as those old clues on Ted Rogers’ 3-2-1 in the 1980s.

The town of Stourton in the Marsh doesn’t exist, of course, but it certainly makes you think of Moreton in the Marsh.

Apart from that, nothing much more to say about this story. It’s about now that I started to get really bored with this book. If you’re still with me, gentle reader, well done you, I’m not sure how you’re hanging on.

The Ambassador’s Boots

The penultimate tale in the book is a rather unsatisfactory account of two kit bags being swapped and Tommy allowing himself to be lured (yet again) into the hands of danger, where he will be rescued by Tuppence and the Police. These stories get more and more fanciful as the book progresses. It seems to me that there are loose ends in this story that aren’t properly tied up; it’s as though the story finishes too early.

Tommy here is emulating H. C. Bailey’s sleuth Reggie Fortune, someone else who appears to have gone permanently out of fashion. Perhaps more interesting is the allusion to a Sherlock Holmes story where it was pertinent how far the parsley had sunk into the butter. That’s The Adventure of the Six Napoleons, published in 1904.

In what would today be seen to be a rather unpleasant racial sideswipe, Tommy refers to the Spanish looking chap that bursts into the office as a dago. Remembering that this story was originally written in 1924, that precedes by one year the word’s more thorough usage in The Secret of Chimneys. I’ll watch to see if Christie continues to use it in further books.

The bag swap took place on board the SS Nomadic. You can still visit her at Belfast’s dockyards. You won’t, however, find Cyclamen Ltd at Bond Street.

The Man who was Number 16

And finally, we come to the last story that wraps up the book – and not a moment too soon, in my opinion! Christie comes full circle in this story by cocking a snoop at her own The Big Four and the dearly beloved Hercule Poirot. Christie must have revised her original short story somewhat to include the Big Four reference as the short story appeared in the Sketch in December 1924 (it was actually the last story she wrote for The Sketch) and The Big Four was published in 1927. Interesting that she chooses to refer a book that she herself considered to be well below standard.

For the most part this is an exciting end to the book, with some nice touches of “classic” espionage – Tommy has to say “I myself was in Berlin on the 13th of last month” to prove that he’s on the same side as the special agent – and there’s a suspenseful race against time as Tommy and Carter try to rescue Tuppence from the clutches of the Russian Spy. It’s all very camp and cloak and dagger; at one point, Carter reassures Tommy that Tuppence will be alright in the hotel room with the spy: “one of my men’s inside – behind the sofa”. Albert encourages Tommy to engage his little grey cells in a Poirot-like structured and neat examination of the facts in order to solve the case. Which of course he does.

And there is a happy ending – predictably nauseous though it may be!

The only thing that remains is for me to give this an overall satisfaction rating of 6/10. It started well, but I got bored. Still, it’s a clever concept and if you’re a big Tommy and Tuppence fan, you’ll positively wallow in the bright young things’ way of living life and being daring. Contemporary T&T fans would have to wait another twelve years before Christie brought them back, in N or M?

So there we are at the end of this rather exhaustive look back at what originally looked deceptively straightforward! Thanks for sticking with me, if you did. The next book stays with the short story format and it’s our first meeting with the enigmatic Harley Quin in The Mysterious Mr Quin. If you’d like to read it too, I’ll blog about it in a few weeks’ time. In the meanwhile, happy sleuthing and keep on Christie-ing!

If you enjoy my Agatha Christie Challenge, did you know it is now available as a book? In two revised volumes, it contains all my observations about Christie’s books and short stories, and also includes all her plays! The perfect birthday or Christmas gift, you can buy it from Amazon – the links are here and here!

Review – Market Boy, Actors Company, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 22nd July 2016

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Time for another production from the Royal and Derngate’s Actors Company, whom we have seen a few times now and have always carried off a good show – until now…. This time they gave us a sensationally good show! David Eldridge’s Market Boy, which was produced by the National Theatre in 2006, is a funny, thought-provoking, heart-warming and nostalgic play about growing up in and around Romford Market in the late 1980s, at a time when the impetus to work hard for yourself and be successful was at its Thatcherite height. I know – because even Mrs Chrisparkle and I briefly caught the bug.

The Market Boy himself, Brian, but known by everyone as “Boy”, starts life as a wet behind the ears 12-year-old, who gets taken under the (mainly) affectionate wing of shoe trader (known, you guessed it, as Trader), and his three laddish assistants, who show him how to become both a proper market trader with all the patter and how to chat up girls (with similar skills). Romford Market is a fairly rough-and-ready community, with plenty of aggression and rivalry as well as some (but not many) decent relationships and mutual respect. We see all these various lives intermingle as Boy finally gets round to going out with “Girl”. In the second act Boy gets too big for his boots, throwing his weight around, riding roughshod over those he cares about – as does Snooks, one of the assistants, who gives up the market work to work in the financial markets instead – and both come a-cropper as they fly too close to the sun. Their rise and fall is brought sharply into focus as it mimics that of their great inspiration, Margaret Thatcher, who looms over the market like a free-trade spectre, dispensing dogma and platitudes as she goes.

It’s a great choice of a play because there’s so much going on all the time and the text gives everyone a moment where they can shine. Jesse Jones’ cast grabs it all with relish and brings out both the humour and the dark side of market life and the individual subtleties of the characters who populate it. Meryl Couper’s simple but very effective design draws our eye to the centre of the stage where the Trader’s van (MKT 130Y, nice touch) occupies the centre of his stall. The stalls either side of the stage lurk together to give an impression of tight-knit closeness and everyone being in everybody else’s business, creating a nice illusion of compact claustrophobia.

It’s a wonderful production that uses the Royal auditorium at its best, with characters entering from within the auditorium, scenes being acted in front of the safety curtain, characters appearing in the boxes, and so on. It also has fantastic use of music, bringing a huge sense of nostalgia to the show; you just can’t go wrong when you’ve got Frankie Goes To Hollywood appearing as a leitmotif throughout the evening. Mrs C is always a bit iffy when it comes to watching an amateur production but as soon as Relax started up she was tapping her feet up and down to the rhythm; then the curtain opened to reveal twenty other pairs of feet all doing the same, and she beamed with delight at the shared experience. She said later (and I concur) that the beginning and end scenes featuring the entire cast en dansant were amongst the most entertaining moments of individual staging she’d ever seen.

could now write at length about everybody in the cast, because absolutely everyone gave an excellent performance and contributed some magic to the entire evening. However, that would probably end up being very repetitive and dull. So I’m just going to mention a few people who I thought made a particular difference to the success of the show as a whole. But, bear in mind, omission here does not mean it was not a fine performance – they all were!

At the heart of the show is a genuinely top class performance by Tom Cocker as Boy. With his early appearances showing his wide-eyed innocence, looking like a very young Daniel Radcliffe or Harry Enfield, he exuded that awful teenage uncertainty tempered with the desperate need to fit in. As the character grows in confidence, Mr Cocker acquires great “market flair”, thus becoming a half-and-half adult – with great self-belief in his ability to do well on the stall, but then shrinking down to be just a little boy when it comes to talking to the girl. Later on, when he oversteps the mark and becomes pig-headed and over-confident, you really want to give him a great big slap. He’s completely believable the whole way through – an excellent performance.

I also really liked Alice McCracken as his “Girl” – conveying all the hard-nosed exterior the character would need in order to survive in that environment, but with all the soft-centre that lurks not that far under the surface. I also thought that, technically, she gave the most perfect performance of the entire cast; every line delivered immaculately, every movement assertively achieved. I’d seen Adam Kozuch in a few productions before, including Town My Town and Our Country’s Good, but here, as Mouse, he performed with even more natural ease and comfort, and he really let us in to the more vulnerable side of the character.

I loved Will Adams’ Meat Man, a bit of a fuddy-duddy but obviously a decent sort; he plays a beautiful scene where he comes to Boy’s rescue when he needs advice about buying steak to impress Girl on their big date. The Land of Hope and Glory accompaniment was a touch of genius. The character’s eventual downfall was very movingly portrayed. I also loved Vicky Kelly as Fat Annie from the tea stall, luring with her gently lascivious tone as she tries to get into Boy’s good books (and pants). Zoe Smith’s Thatcher oozed superiority and detachment as she condescended her way across the stage; and Stewart Magrath’s Market Toby was a fantastically ogreish creation, bullying and fleecing his way around the market, terrifying the life out of the front row of the Stalls with his barking warnings. And I enjoyed the smartarse but moving performance of Ben Webb as Snooks, showing off as a shoe trader, arrogantly going off to work in the city full of Thatcherite zeal, returning some time later with his tail between his legs, genuinely broken.

Quite possibly the best amateur production we’ve ever seen – of anything. A shame it only entertained for three performances, but I’m sure if you saw it, you won’t forget it in a hurry! Oh, and if I’ve got anyone’s name wrong, apologies, but it’s difficult matching performers to names without a more detailed programme!

Review – The Last Night of the Derngate Proms, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 17th July 2016

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Mrs Chrisparkle and I have always enjoyed our visits to the Last Night of the Proms – Derngate style, that is – although we did once get to see the real thing in the Albert Hall which was indeed a privilege. As usual, I booked for this show as part of our subscription package with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The Last Night is always a very entertaining – if essentially shallow – flick through some of Classic’s Greatest Hits in the lead up to the usual flag-waving extravaganza of Rule Britannia, Jerusalem and Land of Hope and Glory.

The Derngate Auditorium was packed to the rafters for this final concert in the RPO’s annual season. Our conductor was Gareth Hudson, new to us, and as Mr Hudson himself explained, he was new to Northampton. But I think both Mr Hudson and Northampton got on very well with each other. He’s a charming host, with a reassuring voice of honey, providing an entertaining and informative running commentary on all the pieces we were going to hear. As a conductor, he’s not one of those who over-exerts himself but manages to get the best from the orchestra whilst retaining a simple air of dignity and authority. In honour of the gala occasion, the word had gone out to the ladies of the RPO to wear strikingly coloured gowns, so the stage was awash with beautiful reds, greens, and blues. Mrs C pointed out that if I mentioned what the ladies were wearing, I should, for the sake of equality, also pass comment on the gentlemen’s appearance. They were in their stock penguin suits. They obviously didn’t get the same memo. However, if we are concentrating on appearances, I must congratulate harpist Mr Hugh Webb on his spectacular moustache. His harpistry was pretty spectacular too.

There were eighteen pieces to listen to. Eighteen! Seventeen in the programme and one encore. Given that the concert lasted about 2 hours and 20 minutes, and including 20 minutes for the interval and say 20 minutes for chat and applause, I estimate the average time per musical item to be about 5 and a half minutes. It’s not really long enough to get fully engrossed in any particular piece; but on the plus side, if you don’t like any particular item, it won’t be long before it’s over and the next one has started!

The programme began with the overture to Rossini’s Thieving Magpie – probably one of the longer pieces of the evening as it happens – lively, fun, and full of the joys of orchestration. The RPO were obviously going to be on great form. Then came the Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana, one of my favourite pieces of music, played with lush exquisiteness by the strings. When I was a kid I wanted to write an opera (I know, always had grand plans, me); I often used to think how chuffed Mascagni must have been to win that opera-writing competition, and what a brass neck he had to write the Intermezzo so that his two-act opera became a one-act opera, and therefore eligible for the prize. Clever chap.

So that was two Italians – now for a Czech: Dvořák’s Song to the Moon, from his opera Rusalka. We welcomed soprano Deborah Norman to the stage for the first of four appearances to sing this famous aria, although it’s not one with which I’m that attuned. Miss Norman certainly transported us to a lunar scenario, with her engaging interpretation and glittery voice. Then we had the famous Onedin Line theme from Khachaturian’s Spartacus suite – I know he didn’t strictly write it for the BBC but it’s what every one of my generation associates with it. I thought this was performed absolutely terrifically; incredibly stirring, a full tidal wave of emotion. Khachaturian was to be the first of two Russians – next was Tchaikovsky with the Sleeping Beauty Waltz, a timeless piece of sheer delight, again played beautifully by the orchestra.

Anyone who knows me, understands that I don’t do Gilbert and Sullivan. Yes, I know, it’s a failing on my part; and I have tried, believe me. But, as the old song in Liza of Lambeth goes, nothing is duller than Gilbert and Sullivan, in the British tradition they’re palpably rooted, the music is trivial and far from convivial, the words are appallingly convoluted. (Don’t worry, I won’t quote the whole song.) So I confess I wasn’t looking forward to Deborah Norman’s performance of The Sun Whose Rays Are All Ablaze (even the title is so trite in its need to rhyme) by Sir Arthur Sullivan, an aria (if you can call it that) from The Mikado. But, guess what? I really enjoyed it! I think it was the first time I’ve ever enjoyed any one song from G&S. Don’t get me wrong – I’m never going to be a convert. But I was most surprised to hear its delicacy and sweetness.

After the atrocity in Nice on Friday, Gareth Hudson simply said in his introduction to the next piece that he would like to dedicate it to the people of France. André Caplet’s orchestral arrangement of Debussy’s Clair de Lune received a stunning performance from the orchestra and it was a very moving moment. The first half of the concert wound up with another blistering performance, this time of Bizet’s L’Arlésienne Suite, No 2: Farandole, a piece I can never remember until I hear it, which is when I instantly remember how much I love it.

It was after the interval that things just started to get a little weird. Not musically – by any means; the RPO continued to give a fantastic performance. Mrs C and I just got the sense that this year’s flag-waving jingoism had taken on a little more… shall we say, sinister aspect. It all started in the first piece after the interval, the splendid overture to the operetta Light Cavalry by Franz von Suppé. The orchestra really got into its military stride with this, creating a fantastic rhythm; but the elderly lady sitting further along the row from us got totally carried away and started to pretend that she was on a horse, bobbing up and down with the rhythm, swaying the reins, and basically giving us all the giddy-ups. That’s fine. Good music well performed can do this to a person.

We welcomed back Deborah Norman to give us a tender rendition of Je veux vivre, from Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette. This piece was new to me and I found it very touching and full of that youthful enthusiasm we would associate with the young tragic heroine. Then it was time for the Polonaise from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. We saw this performed in Bratislava a few years ago and absolutely loved it – but I regret I couldn’t particularly remember the Polonaise. The RPO gave it a full-on rumbustious run for its money and the audience responded really warmly to it. Then came – for me, at least – perhaps the most rewarding performance of the evening – Two Songs Without Words (Country Song and Marching Song) by Gustav Holst. As Mr Hudson mentioned in his introduction, Holst’s back catalogue became completely eclipsed (pardon the pun) by the success of his Planets Suite, reducing the rest of his output to virtual insignificance. So here were two earlier pieces that rarely get performed, and I thought they were sensational. This is the English Folk Music-inspired Holst, rather than the astronomically-inspired version, although I definitely heard a music prequel of Jupiter somewhere in there. A fantastic performance of (for me) an exciting find. This section of the concert wrapped up with (as the RPO often do) those few minutes of intense emotion that constitute Nimrod, from Elgar’s Enigma Variations. Nimrod never does quite give you that same tingle when it’s played outside of the context of a full performance of the Variations, but nevertheless, it’s still a magnificent piece and gives you a few moments to cherish those you love and remember those you’ve lost.

It was Gareth Hudson’s introduction to the final sequence of patriotic numbers that encapsulated whatever it was that had been bothering us. He said (and I paraphrase) that no matter how we all voted in a certain referendum recently, we should take the opportunity to allow the evening’s music to unite us. Now forgive me, gentle reader, for going off piste here, and I know this may alienate many of you to bring politics into music, but Mrs C and I are still very much coming to terms with (what we feel is) the (disastrous) result of the referendum. The wounds have gone very deep; it’s going to be a long time before the healing takes place (indeed, if it ever does). Surrounded by an audience made up of almost entirely white, middle-aged to elderly, middle-class Northamptonians (our town voted 59-41 in favour of Brexit) we suddenly realised the extent to which we were in the minority in that room. The patriotism of our neighbours all waving the flags and standing, Nuremberg rally-like, to Land of Hope and Glory, felt very, very uncomfortable. I can’t help it – at the moment I’m not proud of our country, so I couldn’t permit myself to get up and join the others. I was happy to sing it, as I always am. But there was a swelling of nationalistic pride going on in that hall on Sunday night with which I really did not want to associate myself.

Back on piste. Our final sequence of music was as unchanging as the waning moon, starting with Tom Bowling and the Hornpipe from Sir Henry Wood’s Fantasia on British Sea Songs. Mr Hudson introduced lead cellist Tim Gill for the Tom Bowling and he was exceptional as usual, bringing out all that deep-seated sadness and searing emotion from its lamentation-like theme. The Hornpipe, of course, couldn’t be a greater juxtaposition, with Mr Hudson already encouraging us to clap along, even if, (of course), we all did it too loudly, too enthusiastically, and too early. Ms Norman returned for the final time (a little early in fact, as Mr Hudson was still humiliating us with My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean, making us stand, then sit, each time a word beginning with a B comes along – think about it, it gets exhausting) for Rule, Britannia! And I really appreciate it when all three verses are sung in full. Jerusalem, which followed, has much claim to be my own personal favourite song of all time, and nothing’s going to stop me from bellowing each syllable as if I were still in Morning Assembly in 1973. And finally, a lively and fun performance of the Pomp and Circumstance March No 1, which got our Cavalry overture lady up on her feet at the first whiff of a land of Hope and Glory. All credit to her, when no one else got up so early she didn’t budge but held her ground. Classic rule – if you ovate and no one else does, it looks appalling if you sit down again. Have the courage of your convictions! Reservations (as per the previous paragraph) aside, it was a wonderful performance.

And it was also with great pleasure that I realised it wasn’t to be quite the final number of the night. As an encore, and once again with a respectful nod to France and maybe something to assuage the Bremainers, Mr Hudson returned to the podium to crack out a fun and frolicsome performance of Offenbach’s Infernal Galop from Orpheus in the Underworld – the Can Can. Now that did deserve an ovation.

No more Royal Philharmonic Orchestra here in Northampton until much later in the year – and unfortunately we can’t make that concert! Still we’ll look forward to re-acquainting ourselves with the RPO next February.

Review – Present Laughter, Milton Keynes Theatre, 16th July 2016

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A last minute change of plan meant that I was able to make a sneaky booking for Mrs Chrisparkle and me to see this touring production of Present Laughter, which I’d had my eye on for a few months but couldn’t see how to schedule it in. I’m extremely glad we did, because it’s an elegant, classy, sophisticated and intelligent production of a play that neither of us had seen before. I read a number of Coward’s plays when I was about 15 years old, and this was one of them; and I remember at the time that it really didn’t jump off the page for me. I could see how it was an account of the trials and tribulations that beset light-comedy-actor Garry Essendine, but, unlike all the other Coward plays I read at the time, I found it heavy-going. So I was very interested to see how a decent production would make it come to life.

I don’t think there was ever any pretence, since the play first hit the boards in 1943, that its protagonist Garry Essendine is Noel Coward. He wrote it as a semi-autobiographical frippery purely to give himself a star role. Many of the other characters are based on members of his “set” (makes him sound like a badger), and Essendine’s constant inclination to overact or underempathise reflects Coward’s own intolerance and impatience with his celebrity status, which you sense drove him mad with its interminable impingement on his freedom but without which he would have been bereft.

In brief, over the course of a few days, the actor is at the centre of a (largely self-induced) whirlwind of activity that includes two women throwing themselves at him, coping with the relationship indiscretions of his closest friends, beating off the advances of a young playwright hopelessly obsessed with him, and facing the no-nonsense discipline of his secretary and his ex-wife, all whilst he’s preparing to take a company of actors on a tour of Africa. At times it’s quite gentle comedy, at others almost Feydeau-esque in its farcical deceptions.

All the essential requirements of an impeccable Coward production are here. Simon Higlett’s graceful set comfortably accommodates all the exit and entry points needed for the farcical elements, whilst reflecting Essendine’s immaculate taste in all the furnishings and accoutrements of fine living. The costumes are beautiful; indeed, I rather hankered after the smart dressing gown that Liz bought Essendine in Paris. A proper piano; very comme il faut. The spiral staircase direct to Essendine’s boudoir adds a touch of extravagance. When can we move in?

Stephen Unwin directs his hugely enjoyable cast at a smart pace, encouraging everyone to get meaningful characterisation out of even the minor parts, thus providing a superb backbone to support the main characters. For example, Martin Hancock as Fred, the valet, is brilliant at bringing out all his egalitarian cheeriness, naturally offering his rightyo’s and be good’s to everyone in his orbit, no matter their estate. Sally Tatum brings the house down with her self-contortions and Scandinavian impishness as the psychic housekeeper Miss Erikson, as does Patrick Walshe McBride with his slightly unhinged, slightly menacing interpretation of the appalling Roland Maule; two roles that could so easily descend into mere caricature, but here performed with perfect judgment to present real people out of these nightmare creations. Toby Longworth’s Henry is a delightfully blustering idiot who loses his cool magnificently when he thinks Essendine is having an affair with his wife; Jason Morell is hilarious with his over-reactions to… well, to anything; and Elizabeth Holland brings some splendid dignity to her don’t put your daughter on the stage Mrs Worthington moment.

At the heart of the production is an immaculate performance by Samuel West as Garry Essendine. As with some of the smaller roles, it could be easy to go over-the-top and caricaturise Essendine as a merely waspish spoilt brat and arch manipulator. But Mr West digs deeper into the character and reveals someone with whom you can actually have a lot of sympathy; he presents Essendine’s weaknesses with a hint of affection, so that, although he certainly isn’t more sinned against than sinning, the dividing line between the two isn’t quite so clear as you might think it is. Essendine’s characteristic switching between (in)sincerity and acting is intelligently but mischievously handled by Mr West so that it’s hardly surprising that Daphne hilariously misinterprets his intentions; an excellent performance.

Daisy Boulton’s Daphne is wide-eyed and toe-curlingly in love with Garry and is wonderfully easy fodder to his patter and pretence. Rebecca Johnson is first rate as his wife/ex-wife (you choose) Liz, with a fine blend of hard-nosed toughness to keep Garry out of trouble and an indulgent forgiveness of his misconduct. Zoe Boyle gives a great performance as the bed-hopping Joanna, allowing the mask of steely self-assurance to drop perfectly when she’s cornered; and there’s a wonderful performance by Phyllis Logan as Essendine’s much put-upon secretary Monica, protecting him from the worst excesses of his own behaviour with all the warmth and understanding of a senior Matron who’s seen it all and didn’t like much of what she saw.

Impeccably performed throughout, the play still has insightful observations to make about the nature of celebrity, loyalty and pretence versus reality. It’s not Coward at his most searing, but it still has great entertainment value and we both really enjoyed it! This Theatre Royal Bath production continues to tour to Cambridge, Richmond, Brighton and Malvern until 20th August. Go see it!

The Agatha Christie Challenge – The Seven Dials Mystery (1929)

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STOP PRESS: The Agatha Christie Challenge is now available as a book in two revised volumes – details at the end of this blog post!

In which we pay a return visit to the grand country mansion of Chimneys and get re-acquainted with “Bundle” Brent, that typical Christie bold adventuress who, with her friends, helps to expose the activities of the secret “Seven Dials” society, uncover the identity of its head, the mysterious No. 7, and in so doing discovers a murderer. As usual, you can read at ease, I promise I won’t reveal those secret identities if you haven’t read it yet!

In her autobiography, Christie described this book as one of her “light-hearted thriller types”, saying it was easy to write as it didn’t require too much plotting or planning. I have to say, I think it shows; as I found re-reading this book much more of a bind than a pleasure. I found it really hard work, leaving it to one side for days and days with no interest in picking it back up. It’s not a question of the characters, I just found the plot immensely tedious. Interestingly, it wasn’t particularly well received critically at the time; in particular, the New York Times Book Review was very damning: “She has held out information which the reader should have had, and, not content with scattering false clues with a lavish hand, she has carefully avoided leaving any clues pointing to the real criminal. Worst of all, the solution itself is utterly preposterous. This book is far below the standard set by Agatha Christie’s earlier stories.”

The book is described as a sequel to The Secret of Chimneys and re-introduces us to our heroine Bundle, her slightly eccentric father Lord Caterham, our trusty police officer Superintendent Battle, Under-Secretary for State for Foreign Affairs George Lomax and his assistant Bill, and the ever-reliable butler Tredwell. The good superintendent will come back to solve three more mysteries before his time is out; the other characters never return to Christie-land. The tone of the book is once more that of jolly trendy young things making the most of their 1920s opportunities, dancing to the wireless, driving recklessly, getting their man to buy them guns, that sort of thing. Christie does reflect that world extremely convincingly and you can just see in your mind’s eye those rather vacuous characters having the time of their lives, with authority figures like Battle trying to keep them on the straight and narrow with affectionate indulgence. There’s not a lot of character development for the six “return” characters; you don’t learn much more about them than what you would have gathered in The Secret of Chimneys. However, for me, where this book falls down is its general lack of plot. I’m not surprised that I couldn’t remember much about it before re-reading it – there isn’t that much to remember.

It’s also very unevenly written. There are a few genuinely exciting, page-turning scenes which completely grip your imagination and you really enjoy the ride – for example the sequence where Jimmy, Bill, Bundle and Loraine split up and the narrative follows each of them in turn; then they all come back together again in the library, having experienced gunshots, police presence, creaking floorboards and door handles silently turning. But there are some other sequences that, when you look back you realise do have relevance to the crime and its solution, but are extraordinarily boring to read: an example of that is the interminable conversations with Lord Caterham (who really is very dull in this book) and Bundle about left-handed golf-playing. Nevertheless, the proof of the pudding, etc, tells its own story. There are some good red herrings littered everywhere, and I suspected two different people of being the murderer at different stages of the book and I was wrong on both counts – and the revelation of the identity of the murderer – and indeed of No 7 – is a very good surprise indeed. It just feels like it takes ages to get there!

Like her previous book, The Mystery of the Blue Train, there is no narrator to guide us through the investigations, but Christie’s own voice comes through occasionally with some slightly wry asides about the way the story is unfolding: “Now it may be said at once that in the foregoing conversation each one of the three participants had, as it were, held something in reserve. That “Nobody tells everything” is a very true motto. It may be questioned, for instance, if Loraine Wade was perfectly sincere in the account of the motives which had led her to seek out Jimmy Thesiger. In the same way, Jimmy Thesiger himself had various ideas and plans connected with the forthcoming party at George Lomax’s which he had no intention of revealing to – say, Bundle. And Bundle herself had a fully-fledged plan which she proposed to put into immediate execution and which she had said nothing whatever about.“ There is also a scene where two people are locked away in a room and it is revealed that they have fallen in love. Christie deals with that situation very nicely: “There is no need to describe in detail the conversation of the next ten minutes. It consisted mainly of repetitions.”

When one of the clocks goes missing, at the scene of the first crime, was anyone else expecting them to continue going missing, in the style of And Then There Were None? This book precedes the latter by ten years, but you often catch Christie trying ideas out that she re-uses to greater effect later in her career. This, however, wasn’t one of them.

There are a few locations in this book, and, unusually for Christie, they are quite specifically identified. The title itself gives rise to the Seven Dials area of London, described, amusingly, as a “rather slummy district of London”. Perhaps this is one of the best examples of how an area can be smartened up over the years. This is how the Seven Dials website describes the location: “the intriguing network of seven atmospheric streets that link Covent Garden to Soho. Always buzzy, packed with independent boutiques, international fashion labels, heritage brands, beauty salons, men’s grooming specialists, traditional pubs, cool cocktail bars, cafés, restaurants, theatres and smart hotels; historic Seven Dials is modern London’s most original shopping and lifestyle destination.” How times have changed. Christie’s Seven Dials club is located at 14 Hunstanton Street; however, I’m sorry to say, there’s no such street. There is however a genuine Seven Dials Club, based at 42 Earlham Street. Jimmy Thesiger lives at 103 Jermyn Street – a very fine and respectable address indeed. And there really is a 103! It’s the London home of that fine shirtmaker T. M. Lewin. However, when Christie wrote the book, I think Lewin’s were based at 18 Jermyn Street. Sir Oswald and Lady Coote move to “the Duke of Alton’s place, Letherbury”. No such title, I’m afraid, although there was a Marquis of Alton in the late 17th century (the Alton in question being the Staffordshire village now best known for Alton Towers). Letherbury itself appears to be a complete invention of Christie’s.

There are always a few unusual references and words in a Christie book that make me think twice and delve into their meanings – and this book is no exception. On the very first page, Christie introduces us to Lady Coote. “An artist looking for a model for “Rachel mourning for her children” would have hailed Lady Coote a delight.” Rachel? Mourning for her children? I guessed this was a Bible story of which I was unaware but I had to go check. Of course – married to Jacob. Jeremiah 31:15 is your friend.

““Father,” said Bundle […], “I’m going up to town in the Hispano. I can’t stand the monotony down here any longer.”” I wasn’t sure what a Hispano was, so I checked. The Hispano-Suiza company was a Spanish manufacturer of luxury cars, founded in 1904, defunct in 1968. At the time of this book, the company was enjoying a good position in the luxury car market. Once the Spanish Civil War kicked in, the company was forced to be part of the war effort, and after 1950 worked almost exclusively in the aerospace industry.

I thought it was fascinating that at the time of writing this book, Christie called alarm clocks “alarum clocks”. I reckon this must have been a pretty archaic use of the term even in the 1920s. When Bundle first visits the Seven Dials Club she asks Alfred for a gimlet. “You must have a gimlet – perhaps you’ve got an auger as well”. I’ve never been into DIY much, but, in case you didn’t know, a gimlet is one of those little tools that looks like a screwdriver but has a screw-type ending rather than the angular flat edge ending. An auger is a bigger version. In one of Christie’s duller passages, Lady Coote reminisces about some old wallpaper she admired. “Satin stripes, you know, not moiré”. I’ve never heard of moiré – but it’s when you superimpose a line pattern on top of another. How clever of Lady Coote.

Unusually for Christie, this isn’t a book where large sums of money are being mentioned, either in the form of the value of expensive jewellery, or property or blackmail sums. I always like to translate money values into what they’re worth today to get a better understanding of the amounts involved. But there are only a couple of instances, both involving Alfred. Bundle offers him £10 to scarper from the Seven Dials Club and avoid getting involved with the police; which happens to be exactly one tenth of the sum he was offered by Mosgorovsky (£100) in order to leave Chimneys and work at the Seven Dials. That tenner today is worth £444 – that’s some generosity in Bundle’s purse, for sure. And £4440 isn’t a bad sum for a footman to be poached to another employer. No wonder he did it.

I think it’s now time for my usual at-a-glance summary, for The Seven Dials Mystery:

Publication Details: 1929. My copy is a Fontana paperback, 4th impression published in September 1967, priced 3/6. The atmospheric cover picture is by an uncredited artist and depicts a gloved hand wielding a pistol in a most menacing manner, with somewhat ethereal alarm clocks serving as the background. And yes, the artist did get the most important detail about the gloved hand right!

How many pages until the first death: 15. That’s just about perfect. No hanging around, and it keeps you locked into the story – at least for a while.

Funny lines out of context: I liked these extracts for their pithiness and ability to amuse:

“She had reckoned without the predominant trait of a good head gardener, which is to oppose any and every suggestion made to him.”

(Lady Coote playing bridge) “She was very fond of her husband, but she had no intention of allowing him to cheat her out of ten shillings.” (That’s £20 today!)

“Mrs Howell […] was full of pitying ejaculations”.

”I went to Harrods and bought a pistol.”

Memorable characters:
Jimmy Thesiger is quite a lovable rogue in many respects, with his constantly cheeky repartee with authority figures; he was probably seen as quite a fascinating young cove in those days. The characterisation of Lady Coote starts well, but then she fades.

Christie the Poison expert:
The first victim dies from an overdose of chloral, just as in The Secret Adversary. Please feel free to read more about chloral in that blog post!

Class/social issues of the time:

What kind of life is valued in this book? For all that she’s a go-ahead, go-getting girl, Bundle is very much a traditionalist and, although she rails at boredom, what she really wants is the old-fashioned, stick-in-the-mud world of her father, where tradition beats plumbing. “”That’s a fine place of yours, Chimneys, “ remarked the great man. “I’m glad you liked it”, said Bundle meekly. “Wants new plumbing,” said Sir Oswald. “Bring it up to date, you know.” He ruminated for a minute or two. “I’m taking the Duke of Alton’s place. Three years. Just while I’m looking round for a place of my own. Your father couldn’t sell if he wanted to, I suppose?” Bundle felt her breath taken away. She had a nightmare vision of England with innumerable Cootes in innumerable counterparts of Chimneys – all, be it understood, with an entirely new system of plumbing installed.”

Aside from that, Christie’s is, as we have seen in previous books, a sexist world; and there’s plenty of evidence of that in this book. There are endless references to discussions between Jimmy and Bill to the effect that “the girls have done their bit” and are to stay behind whilst the men do the risky business. Interestingly though, Bundle and Loraine show no signs of wishing to obey by staying in and washing their hair whilst the men have adventures. Bill Eversleigh reports that George Lomax “doesn’t really believe in women standing for Parliament”; and in her brief appearance in the book, Bundle’s Aunt Marcia gives her appraisal of Mrs Macatta: “A most estimable woman with a brilliant brain. I may say that as a general rule I do not hold with women standing for Parliament. They can make their influence felt in a more womanly fashion.”

It’s also a xenophobic, if not racist world, as the following insights bear out. Here’s some antisemitism: Bill is telling Bundle about the beautiful actress Babe St Maur…: “”I wonder how she got that name?” said Bundle sarcastically. Bill replied literally. “She got it out of Who’s Who. Opened it and jabbed her finger down on a page without looking. Pretty nifty, eh? Her real name’s Goldschmidt or Abrameier – something quite impossible.” “Oh, quite”, agreed Bundle.” And here’s some anti German sentiment: Bundle tries to find out about John, the new footman, from Tredwell the butler. “”What’s his name, Tredwell?” “Bower, my lady”. […] Apparently he was the perfect servant, well trained, with an expressionless face. He had, perhaps, a more soldierly bearing than most footmen and there was something a little odd about the shape of the back of his head. […] “Tredell, how is the name Bower spelt?” “B-A-U-E-R, my lady”. “That’s not an English name.” “I believe he is of Swiss extraction, my lady.” “Oh! That’s all, Tredwell, thank you.” Swiss extraction? No. German! That martial carriage, that flat back of the head. And he had come to Chimneys a fortnight before Gerry Wade’s death.” I guess we must accept that we are in 1929 and tensions are building.

As usual, the class system is very much at large in Christie’s world. Pompous politician George feels it is incumbent on him and his ilk to preserve England’s traditions – the traditional view of life that Bundle has a soft spot for, as shown earlier: “In these days of changed and unsettled conditions […] when family life is at a premium – all the old standards falling! It becomes our class to set an example to show that we, at least, are unaffected by modern conditions. They call us the Die Hards – I am proud of the term […] There are things that should die hard – dignity, beauty, modesty, the sanctity of family life, filial respect – who dies if these shall live?” At the other end of the scale, when Bill considers if Bundle has a future in politics he sees it in terms of having to “kiss dirty babies in Bermondsey”. I expect the Mayfair babies aren’t dirty.

Classic denouement: No. It’s quite brief and it takes place in retrospect, with the guilty party already having been arrested, so you never get to see their reaction to the long arm of the law and if they try to wriggle out of it, which is a little disappointing. Nevertheless, the identity of the murderer is only one of number of good surprises, so that’s a mitigating factor.

Happy ending? Yes! Two of the major younger characters find love and you just know they’re going to settle down to a happy ever after.

Did the story ring true? If you believe that the criminal mastermind behind this case could genuinely carry off all the subterfuge and misleading behaviour that it would require, then there’s no reason not to believe the whole thing. There is, however, a lot of coincidence, perhaps most significantly the fact that Bundle was driving past at the very moment that the second victim is discovered.

Overall satisfaction rating: 5/10. It’s not all bad by any means – with some exciting passages, a good surprise ending and some enjoyable characterisation. It’s just a bit boring. Interesting that Christie never sought to revisit Chimneys for any future books.

Thanks for reading my blog of The Seven Dials Mystery and if you’ve read it too, I’d love to know what you think. Please just add a comment in the space below. Next up in the Agatha Christie Challenge we are still in 1929, but going back to the short story genre as we catch up with Tommy and Tuppence as private investigators in Partners in Crime. If I remember rightly, this is a very entertaining read! As always, I’ll blog my thoughts about it in a few weeks’ time. In the meantime, please read it too then we can compare notes! Happy sleuthing!

If you enjoy my Agatha Christie Challenge, did you know it is now available as a book? In two revised volumes, it contains all my observations about Christie’s books and short stories, and also includes all her plays! The perfect birthday or Christmas gift, you can buy it from Amazon – the links are here and here!

Review – Sarah Millican, Outsider, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 2nd July 2016

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We’re lucky enough to see a lot of comedy but it’s not often we go back to see big names a second time because once is generally enough to know whether you like them and whether they make you laugh. Of course, you might want to go back and see them again sometime in the future, just not too quickly – it keeps things varied and interesting that way. However, there are a few notable exceptions where we will always book to see their latest show: Dara O’Briain, Julian Clary, and now Sarah Millican.

Ms Millican commands the box office with a ferocious loyalty that I can’t see with any other comedian. Not only did I have to book those tickets over a year ago – 26th March 2015 to be exact – but demand for her performance has resulted in her doing three shows over three consecutive nights. That’s some demand. What is it about her that makes her so popular?

She’s tremendously funny, that’s what. From the moment she comes on stage till the moment she leaves, you’re aching with laughter. What I particularly like about her style is that you get the sense that everything she tells you is 100% true. She would be the most effective politician if she wanted, and you’d never need to vote her out because she would simply never lie. She also, bravely, shares fairly intimate personal details; from the reason why she never uses bath crystals to the catastrophic nature of her Irritable Bowel Syndrome farts. If you’re looking for someone demure and tasteful, you’ve probably come to the wrong place.

Unusually she started off the show by coming on, giving us about ten minutes of introductory hilarity, and then handing over to her warmup act. In a sense, that meant that she was acting as his warmup, which, when you think about it, is remarkably generous! As a result, we were well and truly warmed up already, which actually meant that we could really enjoy our twenty minutes with Geoff Norcott. Mr Norcott comes over as a truly affable bloke, with great comic observations about married life, teetering girls in high heels and the civil war between the old and the young. He gained an instant rapport with the audience and he went down extremely well.

Sarah Millican is certainly enraptured by the animal kingdom and gets a lot of excellent comic material from stories about her pets. She extends the conversation to getting the audience to call out any great sights in nature that any of us had seen. This is obviously a device that works well, for when we last saw her she wanted our suggestions for what you would take with you for a dirty weekend. This time round, I’m not sure our audience was quite as much at one with nature as Ms Millican might have hoped, but at least one chap said he’d seen a squirrel eating a KitKat.

After the interval, we were treated to more ace routines including the sheer horror of undergoing one of those “relaxing” spa massages, which resonated loudly with Mrs Chrisparkle’s and my one-and-only experience of an expensive, side-by-side, relaxing full body massage which was one of the most stressful things we’ve ever endured. But the main element of the second half is the most superb example of revenge being a dish best served cold that you’ve ever heard. There’s nothing quite so sweet in life as that moment when you know you’ve got your own back on a bully. I’ll say no more – except that it’s toe-curlingly divine.

At the end you could collect your free badge – to add to your collection of Sarah Millican free badges. You could be a flower or a pet, depending on your personal assessment of how needy or otherwise you are. I chose to be a flower – but the queue to collect it was vast, so I will just continue to be a flower in my own mind’s eye. She had the entire full house in hysterics for the best part of two and a half hours. Mrs C was literally crying – and she doesn’t do that very often, at least over comedy. Sarah Millican’s tour continues right through to September but you have to be very quick to secure a ticket. She’s great though, so you really should!!

Review – The Tempest, National Youth Theatre/Made in Northampton Co-Production, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 29th June 2016

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There are comedies, and then again, there are comedies. The Tempest, I have always found, although a “comedy”, isn’t very funny. I’ve seen it a few times, read it, studied it, but whenever it looms on my horizon again I think to myself – oh yes. That play I don’t really get at all. Still, you never stop learning, so I’m always willing to give it another stab.

A few weeks ago I remember telling someone there’s no point being a Shakespeare purist because you can always play them “straight” any time and they’ll still work. No modern production of a Shakespeare play is ever going to destroy the original; and the current interest in shaking up Shakey gives you a chance on a new perspective, uncovering some deeper themes, emphasising the plays’ relevance for today. And I stand by that. However, I have to admit that as I went into the interval of this brand new production of The Tempest, I found my tolerance for the shake-up was being severely tested. Not that I wasn’t enjoying it – far from it – but Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s version is such a long way from the original, that it’s less of an adaptation and more of a serving suggestion. I was talking to another chap at the urinals during the interval (as you do, sometimes) and he said, “well, it may be the Tempest, but it’s not how I remember it”. I made understanding and conciliatory noises. “Mind you, that was sixty years ago” he added.

And there’s the rub. In these tense times where the younger generation are accusing the old ‘uns of skewing the referendum result, there may be considerable differences between what the young and old want to see in the theatre. This definitely is a young person’s show, being a co-production between the National Youth Theatre and local performers with an association with the University of Northampton’s drama department and others. As we discovered in the Q&A session after the show (which Mrs Chrisparkle reluctantly stayed for and ended up thoroughly enjoying) there was a considerable degree of input from the cast in creating the adaptation, and it was constantly changing, even during previews, as they were trying to make it as relevant as possible to today’s situation. And I realised that, as I have seen more traditional productions of this play before which have always baffled me, this time, with liberties as long as your arm being taken, the play made much more sense. It’s a Child is Father to the Man moment. Wordsworth would have been so proud.

This adaptation sees much changing of relationships and sex. Male Prospero, Sebastian, Gonzalo and Stephano become female Prosper, Simona, Greta and Stephanie. Antonio becomes Anton; Prosper and Miranda are sisters (instead of father/daughter); Alonso and Ferdinand are brothers (instead of father/son). And there are six Ariels. Yes, six. Not so that Prosper can tune into Radio Luxembourg (and yes I know that ages me) but something obscure to do with Sycorax’s cruel treatment of the little sprite before the show starts. Actually the six Ariels work incredibly well. Not just because they can act as stage clearer-uppers, but because they can give the role more diversity and characterisation. There’s cheeky Ariel and sombre Ariel, happy Ariel and mysterious Ariel, and so on. It also enhances the sense of magic and sorcery that permeates the entire play. Everyone, whether spirit or not, is at Prosper’s beck and call – she completely rules the roost. This production highlights quite how manipulative the character is; it also brings forward Miranda’s resourcefulness – in this production she is able to subdue Caliban by physical strength and that’s no mean feat. Anton and Simona get a sexual frisson when planning to overthrow Alonso and Greta and take advantage of their victims’ temporary sleepiness to nip off stage for a quickie – very nicely done. I don’t suppose that ever happened with Antonio and Sebastian; but who knows?

Visually the production has tremendous impact. The massive tempest with which the play opens (or in this case, nearly opens, as it is dovetailed into scene two) is seen as a contained but nevertheless brutally wet affair, on the other side of the curtains of Prosper and Miranda’s bedroom. I have read other reports that say it’s visually stunning but you can’t hear a word that the cast are shouting to each other out there on that tossed boat. That is indeed true; fortunately, our performance was “audio described” which I personally always find extremely helpful – although it also makes it very clear when the cast go wrong and miss a chunk out of a scene (no names, no packdrill). The long and seemingly narrow set leading to a secret garden at the back worked extremely well; as did the three doors in a row that fell into place plunging us into instant imprisonment. The lighting too, is extraordinarily good, nowhere more so than in the chilling scene where Ariel (in his various guises) gets to vengeful grip with Alonso, Anton and Simona, spotlighting their individual tortures with gruesome starkness.

Bringing this all to life is a fantastic young cast who work together as a brilliant ensemble but who also all have their individual moments to shine. Dominating proceedings is Sophie Walter as Prosper, manipulating all and sundry with a flick of her pencil; she has a fine air of authority and dignity which is perfect for the part and tellingly summons up all the character’s self-obsessed heroism. Beth Markey gives a great performance as her junior sidekick Miranda, apparently placid and obedient in love and respect, but becoming tough as old boots when dealing with Caliban. Charlie Clee is perfect casting for expressing Alonso’s outwardly noble demeanour mixed with his sense of anxiety and innate cowardice; Joe Law gives us a very wise and physically comic Trinculo and there’s a hilarious presentation of Stephanie by Sophie Guiver, who absolutely nails the drunk act as well as her besotted relationship with Caliban. Jay Mailer gets all the wry humour out of the character of Ferdinand, and Gabriel Akamo uses his fantastic stage presence to give us an imposing but quite sensitive Caliban, who’s not as monstrous as Shakespeare would like us to think. And hats off to the mix-and-match Ariel actors, who present him as harpy, gimp, society diva and workhorse. Mrs C thought the shiny silver-grey dresses the female Ariels wore reminded her of bridesmaids from one of the more cash-stretched episodes of Don’t Tell The Bride. I couldn’t possibly comment.

This highly enjoyable adaptation takes Shakespeare’s text by the throat and thrashes it around like a Dobermann puppy. Very original, full of life and attack, making the most of what humour there is and emphasising its relevance for today. Congratulations on an excellent production – and thank you for finally making me understand the play!

Review – The Planets: An HD Odyssey, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 26th June 2016

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Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast. Mrs Chrisparkle’s and my combined breasts were feeling particularly savage after the slings and arrows of outrageous referendum results, so we were really looking forward to an evening in the company of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra who have so many times in the past coddled us, cushioned us, and sent us on our way home with a warm Ready-Brek glow. We also had friends up from Leatherhead joining us for the concert and we met Mr Smallmind there too, now such a permanent fixture at the R&D that an orchestra member asked his help in shifting his instrument up the cordoned-off Royal stairs post-concert.

Sometimes theatre or concert programming taps into the Zeitgeist and it wasn’t long before there were very few tickets left for this concert; and indeed it was a sell-out on the night. It was great to see so many families going out to enjoy this special space-themed selection of classical hits. The main attraction was to be the performance of Holst’s Planets Suite accompanied by a film created in collaboration with NASA and award-winning producer/director Duncan Copp, and featuring the latest high definition planetary images of NASA’s exploration of the solar system. I wondered to what extent the multimedia accompaniment would enhance or maybe diminish Holst’s commanding music. But more of that later…

Our conductor for the evening was Robert Ziegler. It was the first time we had seen Mr Ziegler on the podium. He comes out onto the stage, enthusiastic and with an air of kind-hearted wisdom, like a good-tempered History teacher, if one of those ever existed. With his jazzy shirt and black velour jacket, you sense he could be a man of many surprises. He certainly got the best out of the RPO, who gave us an evening of sparkle and chic, with really crisp playing and fantastic timing.

The first half was a fascinating mix of little classical jewels, all with an eye to the celestial. We started with the opening of Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra – giving the concert the equivalent of a musical lift-off – and I’d forgotten what a thrilling little piece it is; for an overture-in-miniature, it sure packs a punch! This was followed by Strauss’s (different Strauss) Blue Danube Waltz; also known, in the programme, as On the Beautiful Blue Danube; I’m not sure if the Dowager Mrs Chrisparkle’s lyrics to it “The Danube is blue, it’s blue, it’s blue, I tell you it’s blue, it’s blue, it’s blue…” are entirely pure Strauss. Anyway the orchestra played it with swaying delight, hitting that first phrase of the chorus with wonderful as slow as you dare characterisation. You could almost feel the fairground merry-go-round whipping up to speed as the waltz gained traction. Really enjoyable.

An interesting third item: Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, but not played on the organ, but as a full orchestral piece as arranged by Leopold Stokowski. It’s a composition I love; and what I most enjoyed about this performance was the way in which the orchestra played some of it slow and stately, and other parts quick and quirky. It really lent itself to this different arrangement. (But I do prefer it done on the organ!) Next was the Allegretto from Beethoven’s 7th symphony; always moving, a strange mixture of the sombre and the triumphant. Again, beautifully played by the orchestra, that thick pizzicato tattoo that runs throughout the piece like a stick of rock creating a strong sense of unease and drama. It’s better when played in the context of the full symphony I feel, but nevertheless it was a super example of one of Classics’ Greatest Hits. Finally, we came much more up to date with the Main Theme to John Williams’ Star Wars: dynamic, exciting, irreverent; the violins could have been light-sabres and we could have become enmeshed in full intergalactic battle.

After the interval, we came back for the Main Event – The Planets. The orchestra took their places. Mr Ziegler returned to his podium. Unusually, the lights dimmed, like we were in a cinema, apart from the bright lamps illuminating the orchestra members’ music stands. And just as you thought Mr Z was about to cue in Mars… the movie started. NASA scientists giving their opinions on whether or not Holst characterised the planets correctly. OK…I’ll go with it, I thought to myself, but I hope they don’t push it… Eventually the movie announced Mars, The Bringer of War. This worked so, so well. Really fascinating and beautifully photographed footage of the red planet combined by an absolutely riveting performance of seven of the finest minutes in classical music. Not only a first class performance but absolute timing precision so that the footage on the screen changed at exactly the same instant as the first beat of the next bar in the music. A fantastic combination – I was pretty much gobsmacked.

Sadly, visually, for me at least, that was the most exciting footage by a long baton. The subsequent cinematographic accompaniments for each planet were attractive and nicely realised I guess, but as it went on, I felt like the visual effect created a laziness in one’s head; it served to limit one’s imagination and emotional response to each piece of music rather than enhancing it; and by the time we’d got to Jupiter – which has so many memories for me of my teenage years and all absolutely nothing to do with astronomy – I decided to shift my concentration from the screen to the musicians. Jupiter was performed with a freshness and vitality that I think you could simply describe as awesome. Whether the I Vow To Thee My Country section had an extra post-referendum resonance I could not tell; for me it had an interesting lack of sentimentality which I actually found quite refreshing.

Moving on; the words on the screen: Saturn The Bringer of Old Age created a few chuckles from around the auditorium as grandparents wrestled with cheeky grandchildren; and, no doubt about it, in the movie accompaniment – nice rings. Uranus always reminds me more of a sea shanty than a magician, so it was back to concentrating on the instruments for me. We ended with a stunningly eerie performance of Neptune, The Mystic; when the disembodied choral voices joined in, it was a moment of sheer dramatic magic. The programme promised us the Northampton Bach Choir, but they were nowhere to be seen, which caused a little post-show controversy amongst our party. Were the voices recorded? Or were the Northampton Bach Choir lurking backstage, as reticent to come forward as a politician to invoke Article 50?

An unusual structure for a classical concert but by and large it worked really well. Certainly the RPO were on top form and played some of Classic’s Greatest Hits with dynamism and éclat. Next up it’s the Last Night of the Derngate Proms next month – make sure you’re there!