Review

Ilkley Playhouse

I’m always impressed with the sets when the curtain is drawn back on an Ilkley Playhouse production. The design of a sumptuous country retreat drew the audience into the scheming intrigue of Agatha Christie’s The Unexpected Guest.

As I walked to the theatre in the cold and the damp I felt that there was a mood for murder. The first scene of the play sees the eponymous character entering through French windows to discover a body of a man in a wheelchair. He has been shot. A woman, who we learn is the victim’s wife, is in the room holding a gun. The drip, drip of Christie’s plotting has begun.

We are introduced to characters all of whom, in the way of this genre, could possibly have committed the murder. Each reveal a little of their under belly, a little of the toxins that may be running through them in such amounts that would lead them to kill.

There are several very fine performances in this production. Rachel Conyers (wearing slightly more than when I saw her last in Calendar Girls) gives a very assured and understated performance as the recent widow. I could almost feel the confusion in the character’s mind, perhaps not sure in herself as to whether or not she has committed the murder.

Tony Wade plays Inspector Thomas with the bearing and self-confidence of someone who may well be an ex-copper for all your reviewer could tell.

Being an Agatha Christie play there had to be a valet. I really enjoyed this character, played by Tony Clegg. His facial expressions were a marvel as he contorted his lugubrious physog throughout the play, but particularly when being interviewed by the Inspector.

Kay Vann’s depiction of Mrs Warwick senior could have come straight out of a Poirot episode. The youngest member of the cast, Tom Jordan, delivered one of the best performances as the troubled teenager who had been mistreated by the murder victim. Jordan’s character became increasingly agitated throughout the play, but this was acted with some really comic punctuations.

The play does start slowly, and you will no doubt, as I did, inwardly think, ‘Eh? How’s that fit it? Why would s/he do that?’ However, by the end, you will realise as I did, that Christie is remarkable in her devices for laying confusion and false trails.

We are drawn into the play more deeply as each minute passes. To say much more would give too much away. Safe to say that in the final scenes I felt like a tennis ball in a doubles rally, battered around Christie’s dark court from one character’s motives to another’s, unsure where the defining hit would fall.

You can always tell from the conversations as the audience leave a theatre as to whether the performance was any good.

As we made our way back into the damp January night there was no doubt about the verdict. It’s good, very good. Go and see it.

Patrick McGuckin