THE MIRROR CRACKED AT THE ARTS THEATRE
Joe McFadden and Sophie Ward as Jason Rudd and Marina Gregg
Last night’s sparkling production of The Mirror Cracked showed off Agatha Christie as her very best. Miss Marple has joined the 21st century. She is now a sympathetic woman , warm , funny and good company, who recognises vulnerability (self harm by her vulnerable young carer) laughs with a friend and opens her heart to the audience. With the script enhanced by the talented Rachel Wagstaff, the actors breathed a refreshing life -and masses of glamour into a play that shone with a lively wit . “ I wanted to delve deeper into Miss Marple” Rachel Wagstaff explains, “ And older lady side lined ,and who just happens to be the most astute of us all.”
In the hands of Susie Blake, Miss Marple is full of surprises. “My intention is not to make it funny but for her to exude a kind of empathy which people want to engage with she’s warm and friendly and safe, that’s what I want to portray.”
And of course she does do all that. Her Miss Marple -Jane, at the beginning of the action is out of action with a bad sprain. Grounded , she is bored and restless so when her nephew Chief Inspector Craddock , superbly stolid Oliver Boot, calls on her about a murder in the big house, Gossington Hall, she cannot resist .She has half -solved the mystery before the poor man has got his coat off.With his 1950s tweed suit bushy moustache he is keen to let his aunt, and everyone else, know he is now Chief Inspector. Unlike her, he has not evolved into a contemporary man - save at the play’s end when we see an entirely different, vulnerable side of him.
As Susie Blake hoped, this warm approachable and wry Miss Marple is a character for today. She will not be patronised and when her exasperated thwarted nephew loses his rag and calls her an interfering spinster the audience responded with a unanimous loud low level booing. We were not going to have our Jane Marple treated to insults- spinster, that old word for a single woman, is now a distinct form of abuse.
Other characters are super -convincing. Gossington Hall was once the home of Dolly Bantry played by a superb Veronica Roberts, an old friend of Jane Marple. She is wonderfully old fashioned - of the newly built estate she laments unbelievingly “ they have built a super market - you find your own groceries and do it yourself - and they call it progress’ . But she is not a moaner and adds real depth and comedy to all her scenes particularly with Jane, as I now think of her, whilst they reminisce over tea - and discuss loneliness in older age in a most moving - and yes original way.
Faithful Giuseppe - Lorenzo Martelli and beautiful Marina, Sophie Ward
The star of the show in many important ways is Sophie Ward as Marina Gregg, the gracious and gorgeous Hollywood star who has just acquired the Hall along with her handsome younger husband Jason Rudd played by a dashing but disdainful Joe McFadden. Sophie Ward is beautiful and her voice alone is a seductive triumph ; she conveys the anxiety and experience of fame in a most lovely and accomplished performance. Yet the entire play would be less had not the supporting cast played so subtly to Marina’s’s aura of importance - they proved the observation Clive James once made to me, that famous people do not change , it is those around them that do that. Other parts were just as impressive. I loved Mara Allen as Cherry Baker a hugely likeable East Ender with a warm heart who played Jane Marple’s care assistant in her convalescence - and for cool glamour both Sarah Lawrie and Christine Symmone simply radiate fifties elegance - whilst they both conceal in different ways secrets they have never revealed. How Lorenzo Martelli as Giuseppe Renzo could be suspected of not really being Italian is a mystery - he was a wonderfully alert acolyte to Marina with a whole swathe of Mediterranean mannerisms and butleresque charm - he reveals his true self only at the tragic end of the play.
The play’s direction is brilliant. Playing the same scene over again , slightly differently was engaging. One speech by the brilliant Jules Melvin as Heather Leigh was fascinating in its nuance - and her gloomy poetry loving husband Cyril ( an utterly genuine part by David Partirdge ) who lurks onstage for almost the entire play, reveals his own silent thoughts at its denouement - lines which leave you with a whole re-think of the entire action. Superb acting.
Philip Franks , the Director of Agatha Christie’s reworked masterpiece “The Mirror Cracked’ thinks theatre has a lot of catching up to do with Christie and her work . ”Creaky puzzles with snobby stereotypes are now seen as complex psychological portraits and wonderfully dark stories” Last night’s performance proved that catch up has happened. It is a sparkling evening full of depth and interest with a new approachable Jane Marple, now shown as an attractive older woman for our times.
