Though most famous for her mystery novels, Agatha Christie also has a landmark theatrical credit to her name: her play The Mousetrap holds the World Record for longest initial run, clocking in at over 25,000 performances since 1952, and still running in London. Though The Mousetrap is by far her most famous play, Christie was a prolific and highly popular dramatist. Her fourth play, adapted in 1951 from one of her own novels, was The Hollow.
The novel of The Hollow features Christie’s famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. By the 1950s, Christie was wearying of her creation, though Arthur Conan Doyle had set the example for bored mystery writers by killing off Sherlock Holmes at the start of his fame, Christie resisted this path. She saw herself as an entertainer, and believed that her duty as such as to give readers what they wanted—and if that meant more of Poirot, so be it. She wrote later that the inclusion of Poirot had “ruined” The Hollow, and was determined to remove him in the stage adaptation. Christie’s daughter Rosalind was skeptical of the decision to adapt the novel, and some critics agreed. Critic and fellow crime writer Robert Barnard noted that Rosalind’s instinct “was probably right: most of the interest [in The Hollow], unusually, is internal, and difficult to present via Christie’s rather old-fashioned stage techniques.” However, he concluded, the play is “Definitely among the top ten.”
The quiet intimacy which Christie felt Poirot’s appearance shattered, and which Barnard doubted could be dramatized, is perhaps The Hollow’s most striking characteristic. Though Agatha Christie’s name on the marquee makes a murder seem inevitable, little about the first act of The Hollow telegraphs its deadly intent—a marked change from the novel, which opens with an ill-fated character’s daughter playfully telling fortunes, and predicting death.
Christie’s collection of English aristocrats gathering for a weekend party seem to be a straightforward bunch: the unhappily married couple, the independent woman, the batty lady of the house, the poor relation, the loyal butler, the male heir. Though most of these are united, in traditional mystery fashion, by their potential motives for murder, the play also deals extensively with the emotional currents which flow alongside, but do not always directly relate to, the murder itself. Lady Lucy Angkatell, Harriet, and Midge’s emotional childhood memories of time spent on their cousin Edward’s estate are a constant unspoken presence, and an unexpectedly sweet love story (which has slightly more violent elements in the novel) emerges in the wake of death. More than in many mysteries, there is a powerful sense not only of rich lives that have taken place before the events of the play, but of individuals who will continue on in the aftermath.
Rosalind and Barnard’s reservations aside, the play proved a huge hit, though last-minute changes were required after some moments proved unintentionally comic on opening night. The production was directed by Hubert Gregg and Jeanne de Casalis as Lucy Angkatell, Beryl Baxter as Henrietta Angkatell, and Ernest Clark as Dr. John Christow. The play toured and finally transferred to London, where it ran for eleven months. Christie was so impressed with the efforts of the show’s producer, Peter Saunders, that upon its closing she immediately gave him her newest script: The Mousetrap.
In 1954, as The Mousetrap entered its second year of performances, Agatha Christie became the first female playwright to have three productions running simultaneously on the West End. But in spite of her success and popularity, she is rarely numbered among significant female playwrights of the twentieth century. Perhaps her populist appeal renders her too middlebrow in the eyes of theatrical critics. But her tightly plotted stories and engaging characters display her consummate skill as a writer. The Hollow is a perfect example of Christie’s mastery not only of the mystery novel, but of the stage as well. TACT hopes you enjoy the twists and turns of this domestic mystery as much as we do, and are delighted to share with you another facet of one of the world’s favorite authors.
