APPOINTMENT WITH DEATH
UK publication: 1956 (Samuel French)
Character: Other
Genre: Play
Plot summary and comments: Christie adapted the novel Appointment with Death into a play, removing the character of Poirot and substituting a Colonel Carbery of the British Army, stationed in Transjordan (it is a suspect, rather than Carbery, who actually solves the crime). The guilty party in the novel is now innocent, and the Lancashire politician Alderman Higgs has been added as comic relief. The play opened in London in 1945.
FIDDLERS THREE
UK publication: Not published
Character: Other
Genre: Play
Plot summary and comments: Christie's last play, which combines a thriller theme with comedy situations. It originally opened in Cambridge as "Fiddlers Five" in 1971, and was rewritten the following year under the new title. The chief conspirators, Sam Fletcher and Sally Blunt, slip from deviousness into actual crime when they try to conceal the identity of a corpse in order to obtain money which they need for legitimate business. To their surprise, the corpse turns out to have been murdered, but by then they are too involved to pull out. As "Fiddlers Three", the play opened in Guildford in 1972 and toured for several weeks, but reviews were lukewarm (the plot was too "implausible" for a drama and the ending "forced") and the show never made it to London.
GO BACK FOR MURDER
UK publication: 1960 (Samuel French)
Character: Other
Genre: Play
Plot summary and comments: A play adapted from her novel Five Little Pigs. The character of Poirot is removed and replaced by a personable young lawyer, Justin Fogg, who helps Miss Crale establish her mother's innocence. The play was neither one of Christie's best nor a commercial success; it opened in Edinburgh and came to London in 1960, ran only 31 performances and has rarely been revived.
THE HOLLOW
UK publication: 1952 (Samuel French)
Character: Other
Genre: Play
Plot summary and comments: An adaptation by Christie of her own novel, which was extensively revised by Hubert Gregg. The character of Poirot was removed and replaced with a Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Colquhoun. The production opened in Cambridge in 1951 and in London the same year.
THE MOUSETRAP
UK publication: 1954 (Samuel French)
Character: Other
Genre: Play
Plot summary and comments: Christie's most famous play, the longest-running in the world, opened in 1952 in Nottingham and moved to London within a month, where it has remained ever since. It is based on her short story "Three Blind Mice", published in the US only in 1950 and based on a radio play from 1947. The play is set in Berkshire, in an old manor house converted to a hotel and cut off from the outside by a snowstorm; the characters realize that one of their number is the killer. The characters include Millie and Giles Ralston, the inexperienced innkeepers; Christopher Wren, an effeminate architect; Mrs. Boyle, a bossy matron; the mysterious foreigner Mr. Paravicini; and Detective Sergeant Trotter, who arrives on skis. Several guests are other than they appear to be, and the plot links most of them with certain past events.
MURDER ON THE NILE
UK publication: 1948 (Samuel French)
Character: Other
Genre: Play
Plot summary and comments: Christie's adaptation of her novel Death on the Nile, keeping most of the plot but losing Poirot's character, the detection now being undertaken by a priest named Canon Pennefather, the legal guardian of the murdered woman, renamed Kay Mostyn. The show opened in London in 1945, and ran for 12 performances in New York as "Hidden Horizons".
RULE OF THREE
UK publication: 1963 (Samuel French)
Character: Other
Genre: Play
Plot summary and comments: A set of three one-act plays, intended to be produced together in one evening, which were to be Christie's last London production. They are: "The Rats", a melodrama set in a Hampstead flat, with 4 characters, all 'rats' of some description. "Afternoon at the Seaside", rather light relief without much substance, but with 12 characters representing all possible classes at a beach resort. "The Patient", with a cast of 9, in which one of the assembled party has tried to murder an old woman by pushing her off a balcony (she survives but is paralyzed) and the unlikely murderer is revealed in the last line of the play. The play opened in London in 1962 and ran for ten weeks.
SPIDER'S WEB
UK publication: 1957 (Samuel French)
US publication:
in novel adaptation, 2000 (St. Martin's)
Character: Other
Genre: Play
Plot summary and comments: One of three original plays adapted into novel form by Charles Osborne and published by St. Martin's Press. A comedy-thriller, written by Christie to provide a light role for the actress Margaret Lockwood. The heroine, Clarissa, is a daydreamer whose dreams become reality when a body is discovered in her drawing room; she must dispose of the body before her husband arrives home with some important foreign visitors, and persuades her three house guests to be accomplices. In the last act, she attempts to convince a police inspector that there has been no murder while simultaneously trying to solve the crime. The play opened in London in 1954 and ran 774 performances; it was to be Christie's last great stage success. It was made into a mediocre British film in 1960 under the same title. The novelization of the play is accomplished largely by turning the stage directions into prose, and many readers have found it disappointing.
TEN LITTLE NIGGERS
Other titles: TEN LITTLE INDIANS
UK publication: 1944 (Samuel French)
US publication: 1946 (Samuel French)
Character: Other
Genre: Play
Plot summary and comments: An adaptation by Christie from her novel. The ending is changed to leave two of the intended victims still alive at the close, both to leave someone to tell the story and to make a happier ending. The play opened under its original title in London in 1943, and the following year ran for 400 performances in New York as "Ten Little Indians" (at the time, 'nigger' was much more offensive in America than in Britain). British performances have generally been under the American title since 1966. At least four films have been made from the play (rather than the novel): "And Then There Were None", made in Hollywood in 1945 and very successful (confusingly, it was retitled "Ten Little Niggers" for release in Britain); "Ten Little Indians", made in England in 1965, with the scene changed to an isolated hotel in the Alps, and poorly done; an English remake under the same title in 1975, set this time in Iran, and even worse; and finally an unbelievably bad U.S. film from 1989 called "Ten Little Indians" or "Death on Safari", set in the African savannah.
TOWARDS ZERO
UK publication: 1957 (Samuel French)
US publication: 1957 (Dramatists)
Character: Other
Genre: Play
Plot summary and comments: An adaptation by Christie of the novel. The action is entirely in the drawing room of Lady Tressilian's house, Gull's Point. MacWhirter of the novel is removed, his role now taken by Mr. Treves, the solicitor, and a number of details are changed; there is also an additional surprise added near the end. The play opened in London in 1956 and ran for about six months.
THE UNEXPECTED GUEST
UK publication: 1958 (Samuel French)
US publication: as novel adaptation, 1999 (St. Martin's)
Character: Other
Genre: Play
Plot summary and comments: One of three original plays recently published in novel form by St. Martin's Press, with adaptation by Charles Osborne. A murder mystery which does not at first appear to be mysterious, since when a stranger (Michael Starkwedder) wrecks his car in fog and makes his way to the nearest house, he finds a woman standing with a gun over her husband's body, and she admits she killed him; together they concoct a story and make a plan. The murdered man, Richard Warwick, was an unpleasant cripple in a wheelchair, and his wife Laura may, it turns out, be shielding someone else, such as her lover Julian Farrar, Warwick's mother, or the father of a boy he killed by careless driving two years earlier. A traditional mystery with the usual twist in the very end. The play opened in London in 1958, three months after the failure of "Verdict", her previous play, and was reasonably successful. The novelization, lacking the scope and characterization of an original novel, seems disappointing to many readers.
VERDICT
UK publication: 1958 (Samuel French)
Character: Other
Genre: Play
Plot summary and comments: A play that is not a murder mystery. A murder is committed, but in full view of the audience; and it is not central to the plot. A European professor, Karl Hendryk, his crippled wife, and his secretary, live in Bloomsbury, refugees from some authoritarian regime. A female student, in love with the professor, kills his wife. The play becomes an examination of Hendryk's character, and the plot becomes somewhat complicated. Christie asks one of her favorite questions: whether idealism is always dangerous. The play opened in London in 1958, was not a great success (Christie liked it, but audiences felt cheated with no murder to be solved), and closed in a month.
WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION
UK publication: 1954 (Samuel French)
Character: Other
Genre: Play
Plot summary and comments: One of Christie's own favorites, this play was based on her short story of the same name, published in The Hound of Death in 1933. It opened in London in 1953 and ran for 646 performances in New York the following year. One of Christie's only courtroom dramas, an accused murderer named Leonard Vole is defended by the pugnacious Sir Wilfrid Robarts, but Vole's wife Romaine is perhaps on the opposite side. In the story, the murderer gets away with it; but the ending was changed in the play, in which private retribution delivers a form of justice. The play was made into a very successful Hollywood film of the same name in 1957, with Charles Laughton, Tyrone Power, and Marlene Dietrich.
BLACK COFFEE
UK publication: 1934 (Ashley)
US publication: 1934 (Baker); as a novel, 1998 (St. Martin's)
Character: Poirot
Genre: Play
Plot summary and comments: One of three original plays adapted recently into novels by Charles Osborne and published by St. Martin's Press. This is Christie's first original play, a three-act spy thriller starring Poirot and first produced in London in 1930. Set in the library of Sir Claud Amory's house at Abbot's Cleve, near London. Sir Claud is an atomic scientist and has just discovered Amorite, a new and terrible explosive device. The formula is stolen by one of his household, and he is killed when an attempt to retrieve it goes wrong. By the end of the evening, Poirot has unmasked the killer with assistance from Hastings and Inspector Japp and retrieved the formula. Other characters include Sir Claud's butler, Tredwell (also the name of the butler at Chimneys in The Secret of Chimneys and The Seven Dials Mystery), Sir Claud's rather dubious family, his secretary Edward Raynor, and the sinister Dr. Carelli. The plot is less complex than Christie's later plays, and the novel adaptation is perhaps less interesting than Christie's original prose.