Murder, mystery, suspense, romance plus acting to die for awaits you if you attend this current production, Agathie Christie’s 1945 stage adaptation based on her 1938 novel of the same name. directed by the Company’s current Artistic Director Barry Nielson.
Nielson’s production features a large impressive cast. The focus of the play is on Mrs Boynton, a pivotal role played to the hilt and with aplomb by Leilani Loau. Dressed in top to toe black, her characters’ true colours are revealed as the narrative develops.
Mrs Boynton is the matriarch from hell who presides over her stepchildren with an iron fist. She is an expert in playing cat and mouse games. She enjoys how her family are dependant on her financially; she laughs maniacally, conveying her cruel, sadistic, cunning and manipulative nature. She was a former wardress in prison and has a lust for power.There is a facade of a united family when the family travel to Jerusalem and meet and mingle with fellow visitors to the Holy city before they travel to Jordan. We meet Nadine, a former nurse, played with flair by Grace O’Connell, who looks after Mrs Boynton, and is married to one of her stepsons Lennox, played stylishly by Brendan Raymond.
Nadine tells Mrs Boynton- ‘You brought them abroad to watch them suffer. It seems senseless. You push people too far.” She calls her tyrannical.
We meet Dr William Gruber, played by Vincent O’Neill, who employs the proverb, ‘ Doctors dither and then patients die.’ The good Doctor believes that the family needs to be rescued from the mother.
Anna Hitchings plays Dr Sarah King, a young, sophisticated English Doctor, who has affection for Raymond which his mother tries to obstruct. Mrs Boyton tells her that she is ‘unprofessional and runs after men.’ Dr King answers back that at least she has ‘sex, youth and time on her side’ whilst she only has at the most six months to live.
Emmanuel Said plays a Dragoman, an official travel guide and interpreter, with warmth and humour. This Dragoman loves to quote the poetry of Wordsworth, has a very obliging nature, and describes Petra as ‘a place of sacrifice’ with a great deal of foreboding.
David Stewart- Hunter plays the investigator, Colonel Carbery, with finesse. Barry James Acosta debonairly plays Jefferson Cape, and Kunal Lakhani doubles up as a clerk and a waiter.
The themes of betrayal and the dichotomy between life and death, illness and health abound in the play.
Michael Schell’s soundscape is a good one. The pre-show musical recordings are of the Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire era and set the tone for the play. During the course of the play Middle Eastern music is featured. Strains of dramatic music abruptly brings scenes to an end adding to the tense atmosphere.
Act 2 is especially evocative of the nineteen thirties with the characters dressed to the nines. For example, Jefferson is in a dapper white jacket and black pants, Nadine is in a flowing blue gown. All the women wear drop, bejewelled earrings.
Owen Gimblett’s set is a representation of a lobby in a Jerusalem hotel. The lobby features a front desk with a bell and a telephone, decorative cushions splashed on chairs, a footstool, and there are some rugs on the floor. Through the play much use is made of various props including the clerk’s frequent broom sweeping.
So whodunnit?! There’s only one way to find out! Make an appointment to see some tense, entertaining theatre. APPOINTMENT WITH DEATH plays the Genesian Theatre, 420 Kent street, city until 20th August. Performance times are Friday and Saturday evenings at 8 pm and Sundays at 4.30 pm.