Miss Marple has very big boots. To fill them, in light of previous wearers, is no mean feat and one not without certain dangers. Only a few hours before attending the Everyman to see A Murder is Announced I happened to switch on the telly to be greeted by Julia McKenzie heading a star-studded cast in another of Agatha Christie’s well-trodden tales about the amateur female sleuth. The Geraldine McEwan and Angela Lansbury versions are also frequently shown – not to mention Joan Hickson and Margaret Rutherford from days of yore. Big boots indeed.
Miss Marple is usually played as rather prim and proper or, in the case of Margaret Rutherford, as a battle axe. Judy Cornwell has found a new way of presenting her – frumpy, dowdy even – all cardigans, charity-shop tweeds and trilby hats.
The play itself is typical Agatha Christie fare – a group of mostly middle-aged, middle-class people standing or sitting around in an over-furnished large country house, waiting for one of their number to be murdered. There is also the obligatory pair a juves, a lugubrious police inspector and an ASM with a cough and a spit as his trusty sergeant. In fact, casting for these plays neatly matches the actors available in your typical provincial rep company in the fifties and sixties. And that’s what these plays are essentially – rep potboilers – and as the curtain rose on A Murder is Announced I couldn’t help but be transported back to the days of wobbly sets, over-stuffed sofas and a very familiar fireplace. Nothing wrong with that though.
It’s amazing to think that in these days of sophisticated or fast action plots and mesmerising special effects that these plays are still performed. I guess it is to do with nostalgia, nostalgia for a simpler way of life, for good manners, a structured society and yes, even rep.
So, what of A Murder is Announced? This group of mostly middle-aged, middle-class people waiting to be slain has the advantage of knowing precisely when and where the murder will take place – it has been announced in the local paper. There is a very convoluted plot and back-story with enough red herrings to exceed the country’s North Sea fishing quotas. Entertaining stuff, but you have to pay attention.
All in all it was what it said on the tin, no more, no less and if you like a good Agatha Christie who-dunnit then you’ll enjoy this one. The cast, on the whole was good. Diane Fletcher was convincing as the owner of the house and I liked Sarah Thomas as scatter-brained Bunny, her life-long friend. The trio of ladies of a certain age was completed by Cara Chase and Tom Craddock struck the right note as the inspector who called. Lydia Piechowiak came close to upstaging everyone as Mitzi the loud and assertive middle-European maid who feared that she might be the intended victim at the hands of agents from her distant communist homeland.
Sadly Miss Cornwell was rather too lack-lustre, a bit too dowdy and much too quiet (one was straining to hear her at times) to really carry off this iconic character and I’m afraid the Miss Marple boots turned out to be several sizes too big. ★★★☆☆ Michael Hasted 15/09/15
