Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie’s famous Belgium detective, has a throw-away line, an aphoristic paradox, in the Alley Theatre’s production of “Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” — “its unimportant,” he says of another character’s observation, “and that’s what makes it very interesting.”
The same might be said of the play. Given that the character of Roger is not particularly developed beyond wearing a smoking jacket and ending slumped over his writing table with a knife in his back, it’s unimportant that he is murdered. The audience has no reason to mourn his passing and only a slight tingle of interest in the way he goes. But something here is interesting, nevertheless.
It’s the simple fact that Mark Shanahan who has adapted the play from Christie’s 1926 novel and directed the Alley’s production has opted to stress the comedy of the play. In doing so, he joins other writers and directors (I’m thinking of the 2022 film that uses Christie’s “The Mousetrap” as the backdrop for laughs — not to mention Margaret Rutherford’s “Miss Marple” films from the 1960s) who decline to take Christie seriously as either a deviser of complex characters or socially significant plots and something more like an ancient great-aunt whose prudery, bath powder, and antiquated shoes evoke slightly suppressed snickers. I have serious doubts that such a view is what the British Crime Writer’s Association had in mind when, as recently as 2013, they voted “Roger Ackroyd” the best crime novel ever.
I do not mention this as a complaint but rather, as I said, an interesting observation: the way crime, murder, and what Edgar Allan Poe called “ratiocination,” have become fodder for laughs. The production itself encourages the audience to notice this when it starts Act II with a monologue by Poirot filled with philosophical and penetrating observations such as his reminder that “to catch a murderer, you must think like a murderer” and “the truth, however horrifying and ugly in itself, is beautiful to its seeker.” These phrases stick out like blades in bodies.
Despite what seems like an odd interlude in this monologue, the production successfully progresses as a comedy, supplying one comic character after another. Susan Koozin as Gertrude Ackroyd, the victim’s sister, shines as the older woman hungry for her daughter to snag a rich husband and frustrated at her brother’s tight grip on his wallet. Ms. Koozin has only to raise her arms and the pitch of her voice to make an impression, and she always impresses as she surfs the audience’s roars of laughter at her portrayal.
Similarly, David Rainey as the inept Inspector Raglan captures, not the criminal, but the policeman as the fool on the scene. More nuanced but equally good at serving up laughter are Elizabeth Bunch as Caroline Sheppard and Christopher Salazar as her brother, the country doctor. They thrust and parry with ease even as Salazar must carry the burden of being the narrator of the piece — the point of view from which all the action is seen.
But the performance of David Sinaiko as Hercule Poirot is the fulcrum on which the production must balance. And Sinaiko’s Poirot is a philosopher clown: clownish in his spats, waistcoat, hat and cane, and his signature over-groomed moustache and French/Belgian accent. One character mistakes him for a hairdresser!
But he is also the philosopher, the logician who sees into other people’s motives and natures: a well-groomed cat who will inevitably capture his murderous prey. For Christie, Poirot is an ironic figure, but, in this production, he works like a weight keeping the play from plunging into full-fledged laughter while letting the scale tetter in that direction an awful lot.
All of this action takes place on a marvelously lush set designed by Klara Zieglerova — the dream English drawing room with a writing room tucked tastefully in the back for the victim to be murdered in. It keeps the grisliness of the crime at a distance, thus not challenging the humor. It is the kind of meticulousness that the Alley excels at.
In the end, it’s no mystery that this production is meant to be a crowd-pleaser in the tradition of the Alley’s Summer Chills production, and it does not disappoint. But it, unintentionally I believe, give audiences something to chew over: why have we become so willing to be amused by crime and murder? That’s a mystery we need a Hercule Poirot to solve.
“Agatha Christie’s the Murder of Roger Ackroyd” is on the Alley Theatre’s Hubbard main stage through Aug. 27.
Robert Donahoo is a professor at Sam Houston State University and writes theater reviews for The Courier.
