DEAD IN THE WATER
posted by James Reel
In the latest issue of the Tucson Weekly, I pass judgment on Live Theatre Workshop’s production of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Nile:
Christie seems to be a reliable money-maker for Live Theatre Workshop, and if the company is dusting off one of her quaint mysteries yet again, that's just fine if it will set LTW up financially to do something chancier later this season, notably Toni Press-Coffman's Holy Spirit on Grand Avenue. But here we are, at the moment, with Dame Agatha and her ship of fools, and it's worth boarding the old boat even though director Delani Cody makes a couple of serious miscalculations in the second half.Chuck Graham in the Citizen was kinder to the show than I am; Kathy Allen in the Star absolutely panned it. I’m in the middle, more or less, but if I were to lean more acutely in direction or the other, it would be toward Kathy’s side. You can read my complete review here.
The basic problem: How seriously are we to take Agatha Christie these days? She did have the good sense to work some humor into her characters, but she also fell back onto a number of unintentionally melodramatic little mystery conventions that seemed silly and predictable even as she was helping to invent them. So when a company like Live Theatre Workshop mounts a 60-year-old play like Murder on the Nile, should it be played straight, or should it be sent up?
