Murder on the Nile

Murder on the Nile
Murder on the Nile
	A production of the play by the Department of Theater and Dance at Otterbein University, 1985
Written by	Agatha Christie
Characters	Beadsellers; Steward; Helen Ffoliot-ffoulkes; Christina Grant; Smith; Louise; Dr. Bessner; Kay Mostyn; Simon Mostyn; Canon Pennefather; Jacqueline de Severac; McNaught
Date premiered	17 January 1944
Original language	English

Murder on the Nile (sometimes titled Hidden Horizon^[1]) is a 1944 murder mystery play by crime writer Agatha Christie, based on her 1937 novel Death on the Nile.

Background

The play is based on her 1937 novel Death on the Nile which in itself started off as a play which Christie called Moon on the Nile. Once written, she decided it would do better as a book and she only resurrected the play version in 1942 when she was in the middle of writing the theatrical version of And Then There Were None and her actor friend Francis L. Sullivan was looking for a play in which Hercule Poirot might feature. Discussions took place until October as Christie was tired of the character of Poirot and wanted to exclude him from the drama altogether. She managed to persuade Sullivan of this plan when she promised to write into the play the part of a church canon for him to play.^[2]

Once backing had been found, rehearsals for the play began in January 1944 in Dundee in which Christie enthusiastically joined in, now that she was thoroughly enamoured of the theatre and its people. It premiered there on 17 January at the Dundee Repertory Theatre^[3] and the title of the play had also been changed to Hidden Horizon. For reasons not specified in her biography, these rehearsals and the plans to stage the play appear to have suffered delays to find a London theatre to take the show, once it had been tried out in the provinces. Matters were not helped by the lukewarm critical reaction to Appointment with Death when that play opened in March 1945. A further issue was the objection of an official from the Ministry of Labour to the presence of a maid in the cast of characters.

The play, with the name Murder on the Nile finally opened in the West End on 19 March 1946 at the Ambassadors Theatre, where six years later The Mousetrap would open. By this time, Sullivan was no longer in the cast.^[4]

The play features fewer characters who were derived from multiple of the book's characters; Marie Van Schuyler and Mrs. Allerton are merged into the character of Helen ffoliot-ffoulkes while Cornelia Robson, Miss Bowers and Rosalie Otterbourne become Christina Grant. William Smith is a combination of Mr. Ferguson and Tim Allerton and the three characters of Hercule Poriot, Andrew Pennington and Jim Fanthorp become Canon Ambrose Pennefather. In addition, Simon Doyle's surname changes to Mostyn, Linnet Ridgeway is now Kay, and Jacqueline de Bellefort becomes Jacqueline de Severac. The characters of Salome Otterbourne, Signor Richetti and Colonel Race are dropped from the plot.

Scenes

Act 1: On the paddle steamer Lotus in late afternoon.

Act 2
Scene 1: The same; three days later.
Scene 2: The same; five minutes later.

Act 3: The same; the following morning.

Characters

The characters in Murder on the Nile are as follows.

Beadsellers, pesky peddlers of cheap trinkets
Steward, the head waiter
Miss Helen ffoliot-ffoulkes, a wealthy snob
Christina Grant, her niece
William Smith, a wise-cracking socialist
Louise, Kay Mostyn's maid
Dr Bessner, a psychologist and physician
Kay Mostyn, the "richest girl in England"
Simon Mostyn, Kay's husband
Canon Ambrose Pennefather, Kay's uncle and guardian
Jacqueline de Severac, Kay's ex-best friend and Simon's ex-fiancée
McNaught, the Lotus's captain

Reception of London production

Ivor Brown reviewed the play positively in the 24 March 1946 issue of The Observer: "As far as plot (intricate, of course) is concerned, the new Agatha Christie play might as well have tipped its corpses into the Thames. But Egypt offers the scene-painter a better chance (nicely taken by Danae Gaylen) and the off-stage tattoo of African percussion-music. The piece has the proper excitements of its hard-worked kind; a weakness lies in its blending of the usual mystery-mechanism with unusual human emotion. We have come to take our murders lightly in this kind of theatre; consequently a serious ending, with the guilty party nobly declining an obvious suicide at sacerdotal urgence, the better to find salvation via the scaffold, is too momentous a finale for so light a morsel of play-making. The previous and familiar appurtenance of clue and counter-clue one contentedly accepts: all this is apt enough – but must there be heaven, too? We leave with a sense of conflict. Has not the Oo-dun-it or Egyptian Butcher-bird been devoured in the last minute, by an 'Allegory on the Banks of the Nile'?"^[5]

The play was reviewed in the Daily Mirror of 21 March 1946 by Bernard Buckham who said, "An Agatha Christie play, but a poor one. Various acts of violence on a pleasure steamer and it becomes a question of 'who murdered the bride?' At this time of day such a set-ups needs to have character interest, ingenuity of plot, and excitement. This piece falls down on them all. Most of the acting fireworks fall to the lot of Vivienne Bennett, and she touches them off very cleverly."^[6]

Credits of London production

Director: Claude Gurney^[7]

Cast

Richard Spranger
Christmas Grose
James Roberts
Helen Haye
Joanna Derrill
Ronald Miller
Jacqueline Robert
Hugo Schuster
Ivan Brandt
Rosemary Scott
David Horne
Vivienne Bennett
Walter Lindsay

Broadway production

Titled Hidden Horizon, the play opened at the Plymouth Theater in New York on 19 September 1946 but only ran for twelve performances before closing on 28 September.^[8]

Credits of Broadway production

Director: Albert de Courville

Cast

C. K. Alexander as Steward
David Andrews as Bead Seller
Monty Banks, Jr. as Bead Seller
Diana Barrymore as Jacqueline De Severac
Blair Davies as Simon Mostyn
Leland Hamilton as Egyptian Policeman
Halliwell Hobbes as Archdeacon Pennyfeather
Barbara Joyce as Kay Mostyn
Edith Kingdon Gould as Louise
Eva Leonard-Boyne as Miss ffoliot-ffoulkes
David Manners as Smith
Damian Nimer as Egyptian Policeman
Joy Ann Page as Christina Grant
Winston Ross as McNaught
Peter Von Zerneck as Dr. Bessner

Publication

The play was published by Samuel French Ltd. in 1948 as Murder on the Nile as "French's Acting Edition No 174".

References

^ Toscano, Michael (10 March 2005). "A Muddled 'Murder on the Nile' Struggles to Stay Afloat". The Washington Post. Retrieved 16 January 2018.
^ Morgan, Janet. Agatha Christie, A Biography. (pp. 239–240) Collins, 1984 ISBN 0-00-216330-6
^ University of Glasgow page on play
^ Morgan. (p. 245)
^ The Observer 24 March 1946 (p. 2)
^ Daily Mirror 21 March 1946 (p. 7)
^ Agatha Christie – Official Centenary Celebration (p. 79). 1990. Belgrave Publishing Ltd. ISBN 0-00-637675-4.
^ IBDB page on play