And Then There Were None
Somewhere off the coast of Devon is a dreary little island with high cliffs, higher tides and no way to escape. It’s Soldier Island: a lovely place to put your feet up, take a dip, meet nine strangers and watch as you all get slowly picked off one by one.
This is the wickedly thrilling premise of Agatha Christie’s 1939 classic And Then There Were None. A favourite among Christie fans (and Christie herself), it arrives at the Comedy Theatre in a production that once again proves that the master of the whodunnit can still thrill us nearly 100 years on. Yet this revival from director Robyn Nevin – her second of Christie’s following 2023’s The Mousetrap – rests on the laurels of its author too often, offering a passable but ultimately thin restaging that I think signals the end of the recent resurgence of British classics in our theatres.
It’s 1939. Ten people have been invited to Soldier Island under suspicious pretences. They have little in common apart from the skeletons in their closets. For much of the show’s bloated first act we’re watching this motley crew of potential victims introduce themselves to each other. Christie is famous for her ability to construct a complete impression of a person in one short phrase. But here, these characters have a tendency to over explain themselves, and it can get a bit tedious. You can feel Nevin trying to amplify comedic beats or attempt more creative blocking to avoid this exposition-heavy first half from getting too stale. For this,...