![]() ![]() The villain’s “real” first name is a dead giveaway that he was inspired by the all-too-really-real Bruno Hauptmann, who was executed for the Lindbergh killing. He is attended by male secretary Hector MacQueen (John Eidman, suitably mild until he gets more gumption later in the play). Bruno Cassetti, played with sinister swagger by local stalwart actor Clifford Hoffman. Their costumes rival the film versions and these ladies do well, especially since they are playing the roles of people playing roles.īruce Hermans is fine as Michel, the conductor, which brings us to the obnoxious still center of this whole revolving system: Samuel Ratchett, a.k.a. Then we have our noble characters, Princess Dragomiroff (Beth Buchanan) with her altruistic companion Greta Ohlsson (Monica Kello) and the medically trained Countess Andrenyi (Jessi DiPette). Helen Hubbard (a perfectly over-the-top Ghillian Porter-Smith) plays an incredibly obnoxious and loud American lady, traveling alone (i.e., until she can snag her next man). Here’s the lineup: Poirot and Bouc are there as friends there’s Mary Debenham (ArLynn Parker, who excels with her English accent), supposedly alone but actually romantically involved with Colonel Arbuthnot (Davis Haymes, playing an easily enflamed Scot). It is poetry on wheels, and Lord Byron himself could not write it better.” A bit of a challenge, yes? The best food, the best beds, the best pillows, the best feathers inside the pillows. Bouc (James McDaniel) expounds, speaking to his friend Poirot in Act 1: “It is not a mere train that will carry you tonight, it is a legend …The fittings are from Paris, the paneling Venice, the plates are from Rome and the taps from New York. Here’s what the set, mostly onboard, is supposed to convey. ![]() It’s a bold, effective move, on par with the serviceable set design (Mike Hilton) and truly sumptuous 1930s costumes and wigs (by David Prescott and Marilyn Abernathy, respectively). The more advanced age of the victim may detract slightly from the pathos of the scene, but the most striking thing here (supposedly occurring four years before the titular murder), is that director Jeff Seneca has chosen to film it in black and white and project it on the set’s back curtained wall. Instead of a 20-month-old boy (the age of the Lindbergh child), the victim is a school-aged girl named Daisy Armstrong (played by 7th-grade actor/dancer Zoey Pham). This adaptation is a bullet train in design, beginning - out of nowhere - with a shocking echo of the kidnapping. Conan Doyle, as well as concocting comedies of his own such as “Lend Me a Tenor” and “Lend Me a Soprano.” Author of 28 plays, Ludwig made his rep adapting classics by Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson and A. The LTVB stage adaptation by Ken “Lend Me a Tenor” Ludwig was impressively commissioned by the Christie estate (especially impressive considering Ludwig is a Yank and not a Brit). Her 1934 novel, “Murder on the Orient Express,” the 10th involving Poirot, was inspired, in part, by the gruesome kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby in 1932, a real case that uncomfortably haunts this and any production. You can bet your ‘stache these are hard shoes to fill, and Chapman tries manfully, following in the steps of filmic Poirots the likes of Albert Finney (1974), TV’s David Suchet (my favorite, in a series starting in 1989) and Kenneth Branagh (first in 2017). Her characters are fortunately (or unfortunately?) accompanied by the world’s greatest detective - the famously fastidious Belgian Hercule Poirot (here Robin Chapman, a veteran of 40 community productions). It’s a journey their creator Agatha Christie, one of the most popular detective fiction writers of all time, made several times. In a play chock full of superlatives, eight strangers (or are they?) board the finest, most fabulous train in the world, the Orient Express, running from Istanbul to Calais. E-Pilot Evening Edition Home Page Close Menu
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