Play: And Then There Were None, 27 March 2014

I went to see the play And Then There Were None, staged by the Cheyenne Little Theatre, at the Atlas Theatre, on Thursday, 27 March 2014.

Performances for this play are: March 21-23, 27-30 and April 4-6.

And Then There Were None, dramatized by Agatha Christie,  began life as a book, published in November 1939 under the title of Ten Little Niggers - obviously these were racially insensitive times, and the poem on which the novel was based did use the N-word. When the book was published in the United States the title was changed to And Then There Were None, and presumably the poem in question was changed to "Ten Little Indians", not quite as racially insensitive.

When I settle down in my seat and looked at the cover of my program, I wasn't sure what the ten little figures on it were supposed to be.

Turns out that the word "Indian" must be unacceptable now, too, and the poem is now "Ten little soldier boys."

I think that's a little bit too politically correct - none of the characters in the poem are behaving in a demeaning manner, so why should it matter if they're supposed to be Indians?

But, setting that aside, the play was well done for the most part and I enjoyed it.

The Cast in alphabetical order
Robert Anderson - William Blore
Jerry Carlson - Sir Lawrence Wargrave
Jesse Howell - Anthony Marston
Erin Kendall - Mrs. Rogers
Dave Lerner - Doctor Armstrong
Jeff Miller - Philip Lumbard (yes, the program spells it Lumbard)
Carol Serelson - Emily Brent
Glenn Shaffer - General MacKenzie
Nancy Stange - Vera Claythorne
Peter B. Steiger - Fred Narracott
Dana Yarger - Rogers

The plot
Eight people have been invited to Soldier Island to a guest house there, run by Mr. and Mrs. U. N. Owen. These eight folks are motored out to the island by Fred Narracott, a boatman who brings groceries out to the island every morning. At the island are two servants, Rogers and his wife. Rogers is a butler, Mrs. Rogers a cook, and, since there are no other servants on the island, housekeeper as well.

Also "in service" is Vera Claythorne, who was hired to be secretary to Mrs. Owen.

Narracott leaves the island, and the seven guests and Vera Claythorne are waiting for dinner when a gramaphone record suddenly starts up, accusing each of the people on the island of having committed murder.

Everyone is shocked, and denies any such thing. Then...Anthony Marston dies...of cyanide poisoning.

The next day, there are more deaths, and the expected boatman does not arrive...

The review
The Cheyenne Little Theatre Players are an amateur troop. They all did a good job, for amateurs. Of course some actors were better than others. Everyone tried an English accent, with varying degrees of success.

There are only three women in the play - Mrs. Rogers, a cook and housekeeper who should have been tired and worried, but who was way too cheerful in the opening scenes, IMHO, and Vera Claythorne, coming for a temporary secretary post which means she should have been an employee and behaved accordingly, but she was way too self-confident in the beginning and ready to flirt too readily with Philip Lombard (using body language, as the actions weren't really in the dialog.) The Miss Brent plays her role perfectly from the beginning.


(You can see this flirtatious and cheerful behavior of Vera Claythorne in the video above - the first woman when the words The Strangers appears on screen.)

This isn't the fault of the actors but of the director who told them how to act, obviously.

Mrs. Rogers doesn't have much chance to redeem herself, being the second character to die, but Vera Claythorne's character development improved as the play went on and for most of the evening actress Nancy Stange did an excellent job.

There was good chemistry between Stange and Jeff Miller, who played Philip Lombard (or Lumbard, as he is called in this version for some reason.)

There was an interesting bit of staging with regard to one of the murders...although the stage was dark it was possible to see one actor sit down, and another shoot that character...so at that point we knew (or thought we knew) who the murderer was...I would think that normally the stage is completely dark and the one actor arranges himself to be murdered without anyone seeing who actually does the killing -

(I have a book of Agatha Christie's plays...somewhere...and I have read this play and don't recall anything about this in the stage directions. But it has been a while since I've read the play.)

A couple of the actors stumbled over their lines a couple of times - a surprise considering this was their fourth performance - but after each stumble they carried on and didn't let it throw them.

Overall, a fun evening.