In early 2024, I visited the Shubert Archive in New York to review their archives related to Agatha Christie's US stage productions. For those who aren't familiar with the Shuberts, the Shubert Organization was founded by brothers Lee, Sam, and Jacob Shubert at the start of the 20th Century. They built a theatre empire in the US, focused in New York, and by 1924 had 86 theatres in the US. By World War II, they owned, leased or managed half of New York's legitimate theatres. Established in 1976, The Shubert Archive's mission is to preserve and make available to researchers the business and artistic records of the Shubert Brothers and The Shubert Organization. Since Agatha Christie worked with the Shuberts, the archive contains important information for Christie scholars.
What I found was fascinating and previously unstudied - the actual original manuscripts used in America for Ten Little Indians and The Hollow. Why were they fascinating? Well both plays were heavily revised for the US market giving the audiences a very different experience than British audiences. Christie scholars and fans have known that Ten Little Indians was marketed as a 'hilarious murder mystery' and comedic - but until now it was unknown what these audiences saw. For The Hollow, a play that closed quickly in the States, the uncovered US playscript gives hints as to why it didn't have a Broadway run. My research was just published in full in the Shubert Archive's publication "The Passing Show" and now I am pleased to be able to share it with a broader audience.
Numbers in parentheses reference footnotes that hopefully add further insight.
The Passing Show - Volume 37
Published October 2024.
More Agatha Christie in The Shubert Archive
By David Morris
There have been numerous books and articles written about Agatha Christie’s involvement with theatre – both as a playwright and as someone whose novels have been adapted for the stage by other writers. Notable amongst these publications are Julius Green’s book, Curtain Up: Agatha Christie, A Life in the Theatre (New York: Harper Collins, 2015), and his authoritative article, “The Shuberts and the Queen of Crime: An Unlikely Alliance” in The Passing Show (Volume 32: 2015-2016). Green’s research at The Shubert Archive had uncovered a lost play – Christie’s own adaptation of her novel Towards Zero. As it turns out, however, this was not the only unique playscript among the Archive’s holdings. During my research there in early 2024, I located two modified Christie plays that do not appear to have been previously studied. One for Ten Little Indians – a stage adaptation of Christie’s novel known today by the title And Then There Were None – and the other for The Hollow, based on the author’s novel of the same name. In this article I will share my findings on these two newly surfaced documents and examine what they tell us about Christie’s Broadway plays of the 1940s. But first, a little background information.
Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920 and featured her now famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. What is perhaps not well known is that the book was published in New York by The Bodley Head prior to its British release. Christie’s father, Frederick Miller, was American and a frequent traveler between England and the U.S. He often visited New York and was a member of the Union Club. (I have no doubt Frederick Miller would have attended a Shubert theatrical performance in New York numerous times.)
Christie continued to write novels, generally publishing at least one per year, as well as short stories, many of which appeared in newspapers and magazines around the world. She also, however, wanted to be involved in the theatre. She noted how much she enjoyed playscripts in a circa-1950 letter: “I find that writing plays is much more fun than writing books. For one thing, you need not worry about those long descriptions of places and people. And you must write quickly if only to keep the mood while it lasts, and to keep the dialogue flowing naturally.”
Christie’s first play to reach the stage was not one she penned herself, but an adaptation by Michael Morton of Christie’s 1926 novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Titled Alibi, it opened at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London on May 15, 1928, and featured Charles Laughton as Poirot. Gerald du Maurier, the father of famed writer Daphne du Maurier, directed. While Christie did not write the script, we do know that she was involved in its production. A newspaper article from the period confirmed that she even attended the rehearsals – something she did often for the plays that followed.
Alibi made it to New York in 1932, but under the slightly different title The Fatal Alibi. It opened at the Shuberts’ Booth Theatre on February 9, 1932, but ran for only 24 performances. Laughton again starred as Poirot and also directed the production.
It was not until 1930 that a play penned solely by Christie made it to the stage, and, notably, it was not based on a prior novel or short story. Entitled Black Coffee, it opened in December 1930 at the Embassy Theatre in Swiss Cottage – just north of Regent’s Park in London -- where it had a two-week run. Produced by the wonderfully named A.R. Whatmore and originally titled After Dinner, this would be the only one of Christie’s original plays to feature detective Poirot, here played by Francis L. Sullivan. In fact, Christie excised him from the four Poirot novels that she would later adapt for the stage because she feared he was too dominant of a character.
The fact that The Shubert Archive owns a contemporaneous copy of the typescript for Black Coffee would seem to indicate that the Shuberts were already well aware of Agatha Christie and her stage potential. While the play was not picked up for a Broadway run, her work was clearly being seen (1).
After The Fatal Alibi, the next Christie work to make it to New York was Love from a Stranger, Frank Vosper’s adaptation of the author’s short story The Stranger, or as the story became later known, Philomel Cottage. It opened in London in March 1936 with Vosper in the lead role and ran until August. Vosper then brought the play to Broadway where it opened at the Erlanger Theatre (now the St. James) in the last week of September 1936. In October it transferred to the Fulton Theatre where it ran for another month.
In 1938 Christie granted Arnold Ridley the rights to adapt for the stage her novel Peril at End House. While a London production, again starring Francis L. Sullivan as Poirot, was planned for early 1940, correspondence in the Hughes Massie archive at the University of Exeter shows that Christie had written to her agent, Edmund Cork, asking if she could get a New York production. Clearly being on a Broadway stage was important to her. On January 10, 1940, Cork wrote back to Christie stating:
We will pay your membership dues to the Dramatists’ Guild. Their organization has a “closed shop” in America and managers cannot make a contract with any dramatist who is not a member. I have no doubt we shall ultimately have a New York production of PERIL AT END HOUSE.
Peril at End House, however, lasted for only 23 performances in London and never made it to New York.
Christie was now clearly becoming frustrated with adaptations and their lack of success, especially in New York. Only two of her plays thus far had reached Broadway. But this was all about to change.
In 1939 one of Christie’s most famous novels was first published. Titled And Then There Were None in the U.S. (2), its plot involved ten individuals who find themselves invited to an island where they become trapped and are slowly killed off one by one in sync with a poem that hangs on a wall in the house. Undoubtedly one of the cleverest plots ever created by a mystery author, it was suggested to Christie that it would be a good candidate for dramatization. Christie wrote to Cork on January 15, 1940: “If anyone is going to dramatise it, I’ll have a shot at it myself first”.
Cork responded four days later: “I am delighted to hear that you are thinking of dramatising TLN yourself – generally speaking I am all against such valuable professional time as yours being spent on anything so speculative as the drama but TLN is different”.
It is certainly true that Christie was already one of the best-selling novelists in the world, but it is surprising to see Cork’s attitude toward “the drama” as being an ineffective use of Christie’s time. Little did he know that she would become arguably one of the most successful female playwrights of all time.
In any case, when her adaptation reached the stage in 1943, it was only the second Christie-penned play to do so. And as would be the case in the future with many of her own dramatizations of her novels, substantial changes to the original source material were made including giving it a completely different ending. This may be understandable for a variety of reasons. For one, many theatregoers and servicemen likely wanted a distraction from the ever-present reality of World War II, and the novel’s ending is certainly far darker than the play’s revised ending. Additionally, and surprising to some, perhaps, given the various subsequent film adaptations and later stage productions, the set design was described in the as “a very modern room and luxuriously furnished.” This “mid-century modern” aesthetic likely felt fresh and certainly had similar design elements to the Lawn Road Flats in London, where Christie was living at the time.
The play opened in Wimbledon before premiering in the West End at the St. James’s Theatre, where it stayed for its entire run (3). Shortly before it closed, Christie sold the play’s US and Canadian license to English writer/director Albert de Courville. Until 1940, de Courville had been involved in theatre and film in the UK. In 1927 he had married Edith Kelly, a theatrical actor who had recently moved into film (4). Through most of the 1930s he had been working as a director in British film production, but in 1940 he moved to New York where he sought opportunities to further his career in directing – both in film and theatre. The license he secured for TLN (abbreviated UK title) gave him the authority to assign the theatrical production rights to the Shuberts through their Select Operating Corp. subsidiary. Julius Green suggests that it was in the role of “intermediary with Broadway’s most powerful producers that de Courville was perceived by Cork as bringing value to the project” (5).
For the American stage, the play’s title was changed to Ten Little Indians. The Shubert Archive’s holdings include early typescripts with the original British title, along with those showing that title lined out; newer typescripts, of course, displayed the show’s new name. As the years have passed, the use of the word “Indians” in this context is recognized as inappropriate, with its own pejorative connotations. Today, the play is globally performed under the title And Then There Were None, with all references in the script to Indians or N-words replaced with the word “soldiers.”
As the play was prepared for production in the US, with de Courville as the director, marketing materials promoted the play as “Agatha Christie’s Hilarious Mystery Thriller” and a “Comedy Mystery.” Even the American edition of the script, as published by Samuel French, described the play as “a phantasmagoria of gruesome (though rather comical) details.”
This was a marked departure from its London billing and led to the general belief that de Courville had modified the script to make it more comedic. But the Samuel French edition closely matched Christie’s original playscript, which was neither hilarious nor comical, making it impossible to know what theatregoers in New York actually saw. Even when Cork had requested to see a copy of the Broadway script, Shubert Archive records indicate that he was sent back the original version for his files. But finally, a working copy of de Courville’s New York script, along with modified typescripts that were then distributed to the actors, have come to light within The Shubert Archive, and these clearly show the director’s rewrites.
Before exploring de Courville’s changes, let’s review the play’s Broadway run. Ten Little Indians opened on June 27, 1944, at the Broadhurst Theatre, and transferred to the Plymouth Theatre in early 1945 before closing on June 30 after playing a total of 426 performances.
Both de Courville and the Shuberts must have been pleased with the show’s success – almost ten times more performances were given than of Christie’s two prior US plays combined (6).
As to de Courville’s script modifications, I performed a side-by-side comparison of his version with Christie’s original to see what this might tell us about the tastes of Broadway audiences during World War II. De Courville retained the same cast of characters and staging as Christie – eleven performers and three acts, with both Acts 2 and 3 having two scenes each (7), but alterations to Christie’s original script were numerous and spread across the entire play. Clearly the majority of de Courville’s changes fall into two categories: those made to account for language and cultural differences between Britain and America, and those made to beef up the comedic elements.
George Bernard Shaw was quoted in 1942 as saying, "England and America are two countries separated by the same language." So, for example, in Act 1, we find “That and five shillings” (essentially a “quarter” or 25 pence) being replaced with “That and a little tip.” Other examples included substituting “I’m an ex-CID [the department of the British police force that is responsible for solving crimes] man” with “I’m an ex-Scotland Yard man,” and “Yes, condensed milk, Ryvita and tinned stuff” with “Yes, condensed milk, dry biscuits and tinned stuff”. In Act 2 “Arthur Richmond… he was my A.D.C.” was changed to “Arthur Richmond…he was on my staff.” The ADC abbreviation for aide-de-camp was likely less well known in the States. Textual adjustments like these are logical and would have aided an American audience.
Foreign geographic locations, of course, were also edited out. Christie’s mention of places like the town of Sticklehaven, the county of Devon, and even a reference to Norway were all excised.
Other reasons for changing text can be differing societal norms, etymology, and language sensitivity in Britain and the U.S. When in Act 1 Mrs. Rogers states, “Rich folks is queer,” and Narracott replies, “And he was a queer sort,” de Courville chose to remove the conversation entirely since in the America of the 1940s 'queer' was already being used offensively to refer to homosexuals. In the U.K. the term was still used primarily to denote those who behave oddly. But while one potentially offensive stereotype was removed, others were sometimes added. This is no more apparent than in the case of the play’s title, as has already been noted.
A Few of the Manuscript Pages by de Courville
Regarding comedic elements, while the director could guide actors on how to deliver existing lines for laughs, Christie’s original script offered fewer opportunities to do this than would be necessary if the show was to live up to its billing as a “hilarious mystery thriller.” New dialog was needed. Most of the added humor fell into two categories: alcohol-related or banter. Throughout the Broadway version of the play, the audience heard significantly more references to drinking and its consequences, and likely de Courville directed the actors to underscore the comedic undertones. For example, in Act 1 of Christie’s original script, Emily says, “I never touch alcohol.” De Courville has MacKenzie retort: “Good God!” Later, when Blore delivers a drink simply saying, “Your drink, Sir,” de Courville inserts a new line: “That’ll put new life into you.” Then there is this Act 1 conversation between Marston and Armstrong:
Marston: But you were footling along in the middle of the road.
Armstrong: Footling? Me footling?
While Christie ends the conversation there, de Courville tacked on:
Marston: Yes, footling. I thought you were drunk.
Armstrong: I never drink.
Marston: Then it’s nerves. You ought to see a nerve specialist.
The other main method that de Courville used to add bits of humor was through the addition across all three acts of comedic banter between characters. For example, where in Act 1 Christie has Armstrong say, “I didn’t hurry, never hurry. Bad for the nerves,” de Courville inserts a line for Blore, “Yours or the other drivers?” And at the end of this conversation about driving down to the island, a clearly sarcastic line for Blore is also added, “Brilliant conversationalist.”
Another simple example of a single added line that could easily be directed for laughs comes toward the end of Act 2. In Christie’s original, Blore states, “Curiosity killed the cat,” to which Lombard replies, “Yes, quite.” De Courville replaces Lombard’s reply with, “One of your clients?”
De Courville didn’t just pepper the text with one-liners though. There are also examples where blocks of lines were cut or simplified to provide clearer opportunities for humor. For example, in Act 2 Judge Wargrave gives a heartfelt speech about the importance of judges, saying things like, “providence leaves the work of conviction and chastisement to us mortals.” De Courville eliminates this speech in its entirety and replaces it with two simple lines as follows:
Wargrave: My dear lady, are you suggesting we judges are a waste of time?
Emily: Yes.
There are also some cases where the director created whole new sections of comedic dialog. For example, in Act 1 the following was all added:
MacKenzie: After you, Mr. Justice Wargrave.
Wargrave: Oh no no.
MacKenzie: Hope I’ll never have to go before you. [relating to appearing before him as a judge]
Wargrave: You never can tell.
Beyond the comedic elements, there are a few instances where de Courville added potential clues, though mostly red herrings, to the script. For example, in Act 1 there is a brief conversation between Emily and Wargrave. Christie begins the exchange with Wargrave addressing Emily, “Miss Brent, isn’t it?” She goes on to reply, “There’s something I want to ask you.” De Courville alters the dialog to introduce a bit of uncertainty:
Wargrave: Yes, Mrs.?
Emily: Miss – Miss Emily Brent.
Wargrave: Oh yes, your face seems very familiar. Haven’t we met somewhere before?
Emily: No, we have not.
Finally, adding lines necessitated some cuts to keep the play’s length appropriate. For instance, deleted was an interesting conversation in Christie’s original Act 1 between the two household staff on the island, Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, about class differences and their observations of the guests. They state, for example, that Blore has “no class” and clearly “no money” because “you should see his underwear! Cheap as they make ’em.” De Courville also omitted various lines that he considered repetitive or, perhaps, less crucial.
In considering all the alterations to the script, it is still important to note that Broadway audiences did, nevertheless, see Christie’s original play in terms of characters, murders, plot, and resolution. De Courville’s most significant contribution was to shift the tone of the play to make it more humorous. The likely reason for the shift, although no correspondence has surfaced to prove this, was profit driven. De Courville and the Shuberts probably believed that American wartime audiences preferred lighter fare that might distract them from the battles being fought on two fronts. In fact, the first pre-Broadway performance occurred in the nation’s capital, Washington, DC, on June 5, 1944 -- the day after Allied forces liberated Rome and a day before D-Day. When the play opened on Broadway on June 27, the major Russian offensive in the east to move into Poland had just begun. When the play ended its run, Hitler was dead and Germany had surrendered, but the war in the Pacific continued. There is no doubt that when de Courville began modifying the script in early 1944, the national mood would have been much darker than when the play closed.
De Courville's Manuscript (left/blue cover) & the Actors Type-script (right/brown cover).
Beyond Ten Little Indians
The Shuberts had hoped to next bring to Broadway Towards Zero, a play they had commissioned Christie to adapt from her recently published novel. But the show tried out for only one week in Martha’s Vineyard, MA, in September 1945, and never made it to New York. It is unclear whether its failure to launch was due to the play itself or bad timing -- Japan had just surrendered, the war was over, and the public’s interests were changing rapidly. Regardless, the play was essentially filed away and forgotten for almost sixty years until Julius Green’s research at The Shubert Archive led to its rediscovery. It is a rare occurrence, indeed, to find a lost Christie work (8).
Meanwhile, Christie’s adaptation of her novel Appointment with Death premiered in London in March 1945, but lasted only for 42 performances (9). The next Christie work to arrive on Broadway was Hidden Horizon, the author’s own reworking of her incredibly successful novel Death on the Nile. The play premiered at the Dundee Repertory Theatre in Scotland in January 1944. Why Dundee? Because lead actor Francis L. Sullivan credited that play’s director A.R. Whatmore, who was now running the Dundee Repertory Company, as having given him his big break back in 1930 when Sullivan starred in Christie’s Black Coffee. Sullivan wanted to give thanks by bringing Whatmore what he hoped would be a future West End hit (10). Unfortunately, after this initial engagement, the play sat unproduced for a while before touring various U.K. theatres and eventually making it to the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End in March 1946 – now under the title Murder on the Nile. Although the London run lasted only six weeks, the Shuberts decided to bring the play to Broadway. Hoping to duplicate the success of Ten Little Indians, they placed it in the hands of Albert de Courville. Starring Diana Barrymore, it opened on September 19, 1946, at the Plymouth Theatre under its original title Hidden Horizon but lasted only twelve performances. Because of the abbreviated runs, programs from both the UK and US productions are exceptionally scarce
The Hollow
There would be no talk of a new Christie-penned work on Broadway until 1951 when the Shuberts attempted to import the author’s dramatization of her novel The Hollow, first published in 1946. A classic country house mystery involving a closed circle of suspects, the play (and novel) takes its title from the home of Sir Henry and Lady Angkatell, which serves as the location for a weekend family gathering. In addition to family, there is also an American film actress living nearby. Needless to say, someone ends up dead, though compared to many of Christie’s other works, the death occurs quite late in the story. Both the novel and play have shades of Downton Abbey, with great characters and wonderful dialog.
The play opened in the UK at the Cambridge Arts Theatre in February 1951. As with her other works, Christie made numerous changes to the story for the stage and once again eliminated Poirot so that the other characters could be developed more fully. The production marked the first time that Peter Saunders directed one of the author’s plays and it turned out to be the beginning of a long and successful relationship that would include the long-running hit The Mousetrap. After The Hollow’s Cambridge run, it played in Nottingham in May 1951, followed by a three-week tour prior to moving to the West End where it opened at the Fortune Theatre on June 7, 1951. After four months, it transferred to the Ambassadors Theatre where it ran for a total of eleven months before closing.
Christie rightfully considered The Hollow a success – even Queen Mary attended a performance. The Shuberts were still interested in producing the author on Broadway and secured the rights to the new show. By now they had parted ways with de Courville and instead partnered with Sherman Krellberg, an American film producer. To direct the production, they hired David Kentish who had recently served as Production Manager for the two-play, 1951 repertory production of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra, both starring Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. There was interest in bringing over the British cast, but this did not happen.
As with Ten Little Indians, script revisions were to be made for the American market, something that the contract with Lee Shubert allowed. In addition, the show’s title was changed to The Suspects. Russell Graham Medcraft, who had previously written the 1925 Broadway hit Cradle Snatchers, a comedic farce that was reprised successfully on Broadway in 1932 and was still being performed in repertory, would handle the revisions. Medcraft, who was also a film screenwriter with credits such as The Camels are Coming (1934), So You Won’t Talk (1935), Angel (1937), and Let’s Face It (1943) starring Bob Hope, was likely known to both Shubert and co-producer Krellberg.
The Shubert Archive Discovery
One of my recent discoveries in The Shubert Archive was Medcraft’s revised script of The Hollow, previously thought lost. The show’s program revealed that changes had been made to the play’s structure and cast, but the specifics were not fully known. Locating Medcraft’s script allowed for a complete study of the changes that were implemented.
The Hollow’s pre-Broadway, two-performance test run began in Princeton, NJ, on October 10, 1952. The following day the press already noted some confusion regarding the show’s potential Broadway opening. While it had been planned to premiere at the Booth Theater in mid-November, that was unlikely now that the venue’s current resident, An Evening with Beatrice Lillie, had become a hit. Instead, the Cort Theater was being suggested as its likely home (11).
From Princeton, the show transferred to the Locust Theater in Philadelphia for two weeks beginning October 13, and then went on to Boston’s Plymouth Theater for a two-week engagement beginning October 27. A New York Daily News article seems to indicate, however, that the production was facing some challenges:
The Broadway opening of ‘The Suspects’, Agatha Christie’s thriller currently in Boston, has been put off from Nov. 12 until later in the month to allow time for revising the first act. New bookings will be made for the play following the Boston run (12).
It is unknown if these revisions to Act I were ever executed, but it seems unlikely considering The Hollow did not even complete its Boston run – it closed on November 1 – and that a Broadway staging never materialized. The Shuberts’ rights to produce the play expired in 1956. In hindsight, this was a great loss for New York theatregoers as The Hollow eventually proved to be very successful in repertory and is beloved by many (13).
We are fortunate that The Shubert Archive has both an original playscript that indicated it was the property of Peter Saunders, and Russell Medcraft’s modified script. This allows for a three-way comparison between these and the original version published by Samuel French.
Examining the three editions will hopefully clarify the scope of Medcraft’s changes, and whether they might have helped account for the play’s short run. We know that de Courville’s aim with his modifications to Ten Little Indians had been to enhance the comedic elements. The Hollow, however, was already rich with excellent comedic banter. In fact, there must have been some concern that a director might try to make the play too funny since one of the stage directions related to the Inspector is “He must not be played as a comedic part”.
The Russell Medcraft Revised Script: The Hollow
Because the Medcraft script, which is initialed “R.M.” and dated as “Revised: September 1952,” is titled The Hollow, we know it is not a post-Boston revision.
It is fair to assume, then, that it was the framework of the play presented in America. The character list omits two characters – Doris, a staff member, and Edward Angkatell, a key person. The latter was clearly an error of omission as Edward is very present throughout the play, but cutting Doris caused a meaningful loss in the text, as we shall see.
The original program from Princeton shows that Medcraft’s script retained Christie’s three acts, but there are differences in the act structure. Medcraft compressed the timing and added a scene. In Christie’s script, Act 1 takes place on Friday (one scene), Act 2 (Scene 1) on Saturday morning, Act 2 (Scene 2) “later” on Saturday, and Act 3 on Monday morning. Medcraft moved Act 1 and Act 2 later by a day to Saturday and Sunday, respectively, and added an entirely new scene at the end of Act 1 – Saturday evening.
Medcraft’s revisions become immediately apparent with the play’s opening lines. Christie begins with a conversation between Sir Henry, the owner of The Hollow, and his distant cousin, the artist Henrietta Savernake. Medcraft begins instead with a newly written conversation between Sir Henry and his butler Gudgeon.
Another significant change to the script relates to the character of Midge, a distant relative of Lady Angkatell. In the original play and novel, Midge works in a dress shop. Regretfully, in the novel the dress shop owner is a Jewish woman upon whom Christie bestowed overtly antisemitic characteristics. As a result, Christie and her agents received substantial correspondence from the Anti-Defamation League in New York asking that the character be removed from future publications. While the shop owner does not appear in the author’s original dramatic adaptation, references to her do. For his part, Medcraft completely excised references to the shop owner and changed Midge’s place of employment to a pet store. Whether this implies American audiences were far more sensitive to antisemitic issues in the 1950s than their British counterparts is unclear, but this was undoubtedly a justified script change.
Class-related conversations also prompted Medcraft’s revisions. In Christie’s original play there is a deep and insightful conversation about politics and societal status between Gudgeon and Doris, the two staff members of the house, which obviously was eliminated when the character of Doris was discarded. Additionally, in Act 2, Scene 2, the conversation between the two police officers about their personal backgrounds and the colleges they attended was omitted.
Most significant of the changes was the creation of an entirely new scene – Act 1, Scene 2. Taking place on late Saturday evening, after midnight but just prior to 1 a.m., it opens with Lucy, Henrietta, John, and John’s wife Gerda finishing up a rubber of bridge. John berates Gerda for her play, and when the game ends, everyone except John retires to bed. Veronica Craye, the actress who was John’s prior romantic partner, appears, and after some brief conversation the scene ends:
Veronica: …Kiss me John, as you used to do - On the beach at Cannes? Oh, come! Make all the stars seem to clash for me, and the world stand still!
(She encircles his neck with her arm forcing a long embrace. Then she continues, almost inarticulately whispering.)
Come back with me John! Come back with me!
John: But –
Veronica: Yes, you must, you must! Oh please! I think I’ll die if you don’t.
(They embrace again. As they do, we notice that a light is turned on from upstairs R[ight]., suddenly flooding the staircase. Now John releases Veronica – quickly turns out the light in the room and follows Veronica off U.C. [upstage center] into the garden, unaware that if he had chanced to look up R[ight]. to the staircase-landing, he would have seen the figure of a woman in silhouette reflected in shadow on the wall – and hear the low murmur of jealous agony. Then we hear a flutter of movement from off upstairs, the light on the staircase is extinguished and the curtain falls on the darkened stage
End of Scene.
We have no documentation indicating Medcraft’s thought process in adding this scene, but a desire to point more strongly to Gerda’s guilt in the murder of her husband seems to lie at the heart of many of his revisions (14). Here, the audience would almost certainly assume that the woman observing John and Veronica’s encounter was Gerda. In the world of Agatha Christie, however, it is rather uncharacteristic to insert a scene that so clearly assigns motive to the guilty party. For instance, in Act 2 of Christie’s version, John, believing he and Veronica were unseen, says: “Fortunately Gerda was asleep. She’d no idea what time I got back. She believes I got back quite early.” Medcraft deletes these lines.
Other revisions that lead the audience to assume Gerda’s guilt include her assertion to the policemen that she and John never quarreled, something we know is untrue. Further, Medcraft removed text throughout the play that could incriminate others, substantially narrowing the pool of possible suspects. For instance, in Act 2, Scene 2, he deleted dialog in which Christie has Henrietta lay out clearly the motive and opportunity of several other characters. In another instance, he removed a statement made by the Police Inspector that “Actually anyone could have shot him … no alibis.” Also deleted was a conversation between Edward and Midge about John and Henrietta’s affair in which Midge states “everyone knew except Gerda.” Finally, Christie’s dialog indicates that Midge was alone “in the garden” at the time of the murder. Medcraft added the phrase “with the others,” thereby creating an alibi for her.
So, Medcraft consistently removed text that might have incriminated others or absolved Gerda and instead highlighted Gerda’s apparent guilt long before the play’s denouement. One of the appeals of going to a Christie play, however, is trying to solve the crime before the answer is actually revealed. While it is true that even in novel form The Hollow was not as much of a puzzle mystery as other Christie works, the audience would still want to be challenged. While Medcraft’s script technically still allowed for the possibility of various characters to be the murderer, in my opinion the decision to make the plot “clearer” was an error.
But if The Hollow as a novel was relatively low on the mystery quotient, it contained much deeper character development and focus on relationship issues – including unrequited love and affairs – than some of Christie’s other works, and the author retained these central themes in her dramatic adaptation. Medcraft seemed to have appreciated this as he made several changes that further emphasized these relationships.
Although John is married to Gerda, he is infatuated with Henrietta, whom the family hopes will marry Edward. In Act 1, Scene 1, Medcraft added many lines of text for John, Henrietta, and Edward, thereby substantially elevating their inter-relationships. He also adjusted the staging to make John appear more forward in his desire for Henrietta. For example, he changed Christie’s original stage direction, “John kisses Henrietta’s hand,” to “John embraces Henrietta" (15). One line even has John reminiscing about a “moment of rapture” with Henrietta. Perhaps Medcraft felt such enhanced sexuality and tension would appeal to audiences, despite it not being crucial to the overall plot structure.
Substantial changes were also made to the third act, which now included an entirely new opening that had Edward listening to a long news bulletin on the radio – a scene clearly designed to refamiliarize the audience with events up to this point (16). Another significant change regards the inquest into John’s death. In Christie’s original text, characters leave to attend the inquest. Medcraft deleted this. Instead, at the end of the third act, the Inspector re-enters the stage to observe Gerda with a gun and informs her the inquest “hasn’t begun yet.” The play’s denouement is ultimately the same, but the ending’s structure is meaningfully different.
Beyond these larger thematic and structural changes, there were a few smaller revisions to the script, mostly to account for language/cultural differences between Britain and America or to add humor that U.S. audiences might appreciate. In Act 1, for instance, there is a discussion of the fact that the future of Ainswick, Edward’s family home, is dependent on whether Edward marries and has a son. When the concern is raised that he may marry outside the family, Medcraft added that the future wife may be “even an American.”
We can see that Medcraft’s play was substantially different from Christie’s original. But despite, or perhaps because of, all the changes, at least one newspaper critic was not thrilled with the production: “But if long on plot, Miss Christie is short on action – at least the type of swift melodramatic action to which devotees of the typical American `whodunnit’ are accustomed” (17). The review in the Boston Globe confirmed that Medcraft’s changes resulted in the tonal shift he was likely seeking, although almost everyone assumed the script was solely the work of Christie: “No symbolism, no social problems, just an abundant supply of carnal passions, with murder and suicide the frosting upon the cake of entertainment” (18).
In the end, it is impossible to know exactly to what we may attribute the play’s lack of success and failure to receive a Broadway premiere. But between the unsuccessful launch of The Hollow and Lee Shubert’s death the following year, the relationship between the Shuberts and Christie essentially petered out. Still, the legacy of their collaborations remains strong, as the materials in The Shubert Archive clearly demonstrate. The two revised scripts discussed in this article provide great insights into Christie’s theatrical output in America in the 1940s and ‘50s and allow us finally to fill in gaps in our understanding of these works and their presentation. Today, both And Then There Were None and The Hollow are produced regularly, but the scripts that are used are based on Christie’s original versions, albeit with anachronistic and pejorative language removed. Gone are the added scenes and dialog that prevented audiences from receiving a much more authentic Christie experience.
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David Morris is the author and editor of the website CollectingChristie.com where his research into Agatha Christie can be found. His article “Agatha Christie’s Plays: From Playscripts to Playbills” was published in Breaking Character, the online magazine of Concord Theatricals, in September 2023 (link). He was a speaker at the International Agatha Christie Festival in 2023 and 2024.
Footnotes:
1. A close reading of the script in The Shubert Archive tells us that this copy dates to the time of the play’s production. Playscripts were often adjusted after the fact to be more relevant to the period in which they were produced. Christie herself did updates along with others involved in the production of her plays. This was meant to keep the work current and reflect the language of the times. These changes allow for the dating of typescripts to specific periods. For example, The Archive’s copy of Black Coffee has the character Barbara Amory concerned that men saw her ankles. Later editions printed by Samuel French did not include this reference since presumably by the 1950s, seeing a woman’s ankles would not be shocking. It would be more than twenty years after Black Coffee until another truly original Christie play, the hit Spider’s Web (1954) appeared on stage. Future Christie plays would more often than not be adaptations by other authors of her novels or short stories.
2. In the UK its original title was Ten Little Niggers which is today deeply offensive as a pejorative term. Despite the fact that even in the UK in 1939 this was a questionable title, it would be many years before the American title would be adopted globally. Because the use of this title is historically accurate, whenever I need to cite that exact title going forward, I am choosing to use the abbreviation TLN.
3. The show’s run at St. James’s was interrupted for eight weeks. On February 23, 1944, during what was known as the mini-blitz, multiple bombs fell in the vicinity of St. James’s, with one hitting it. Luckily for theatregoers, the bombs landed at 11:50 p.m., and because during the war, theatre times were moved earlier to assist with blackouts, that evening’s performance, having begun at 5:40 p.m., was over well before the explosions. As the saying goes, however, “the show must go on,” and so it did at the nearby Cambridge Theatre until St. James’s could be reopened. It serves as a reminder of how theatre in general went on during the war – providing both an escape and a sense of normalcy.
4. Of note, Kelly’s sister was Charlie Chaplin’s first love, while her brother was an executive at United Artists (co-founded by Chaplin).
5. Julius Green, Curtain Up: Agatha Christie, A Life in the Theatre (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2015), 182.
6. A note of interest for program collectors: The show’s original cast included Claudia Morgan in the role of Vera Claythorne, and her photo, along with those of several other actors, adorned the first program cover. Morgan, however, left the production after only a few weeks due to her decision to prioritize her role in a radio show over her acting commitment. Needless to say, she never acted on a Shubert stage again. The photo was quickly replaced with an illustrated image, so the original first-state programs are scarce and highly collectible. When the play transferred to the Plymouth Theatre, the new program featured a photo with the new actress playing Vera, Beverly Roberts. Fortunately, she saw the play out, and the cover required no further alteration. It is also worth noting here that Ten Little Indians was performed for the War Department Theatre at West Point in October 1944. For this performance, the production and its entire Broadway cast traveled to West Point. And when the play was produced by the U. S. Army Special Service in cooperation with the USO in the European Theatre during World War II, the cast included several well-known stage and radio stars of the era. These performances remind us of the state of the world at the time and point to why Christie’s alternate happier ending was perhaps more suitable for audiences.
7. The only change to the structure is that the time of the final scene is switched from the afternoon to the morning.
8. See “The Shuberts and the Queen of Crime: An Unlikely Alliance” in The Passing Show (Volume 32: 2015-2016) for the full details of this play, its discovery, and related archival materials.
9. While the play never made it to Broadway, it is worth noting one successful element of it – the actor Joan Hickson, who played the character of Miss Pryce, would go on to become a household name playing the role of Miss Marple on television throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.
10. When Christie dramatized the novel, she eliminated the Hercule Poirot character and in his stead created the role of Archdeacon Pennyfeather for Sullivan. Interestingly, the actor’s wife, Danae Sullivan, was the set designer for the British production. The author would go on to dedicate to the couple her soon-to-be-published novel The Hollow, which is set in a fictionalized version of the Sullivans’ home.
11. New York Daily News, October 11, 1952.
12. New York Daily News, October 31, 1952.
13. In fact, the show recently played an Off-Broadway engagement at the Players Theater in April 2024.
14. Interestingly, the scene has a somewhat cinematic feel, understandable considering Medcraft’s recent involvement with screenwriting.
15. Of note, the published play by Samuel French removes all physical interaction between John and Henrietta in this scene.
16. This change may also have been partly necessitated by Medcraft’s omission of the character of Doris who was included in Christie’s opening to Act 3.
17. Philadelphia Inquirer, October 14, 1952.
18. Boston Globe, October 28, 1952.
The online version of this article, along with the complete publication, can be found at this link: https://www.shubertarchive.org/the-passing-show.html
Any comments, corrections or insights can be emailed to me at: collectchristie@gmail.com .
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