Agatha Christie: A Life in Theatre. Julius Green

Chimneys to open by 1 December were simply too daunting. Christie’s play is a relatively complex piece of theatre and not without its challenges; Mary Broome, on the other hand, was a twenty-year-old comedy by Allan Monkhouse which had become a firm favourite with repertory companies. Only two cast members of Britannia of Billingsgate did not transfer with the production, one of them being Joyce Bland, whose small role allowed her to be replaced and to take up the lead in Mary Broome rather than Chimneys. John Boxer was amongst those who departed with Britannia. Had Robert Donat, who was not in the cast of Britannia, perhaps been in rehearsal for Chimneys when the switch was made? The programme for Mary Broome states: ‘Production in preparation: to be announced later (see Daily Press)’,³⁸ indicating the disarray into which the Embassy’s scheduling had been thrown by the sudden departure to the West End of a number of the resident ensemble. With the transfer of Black Coffee, this had of course been avoided by taking a break in which to recast the production.

      This piece of opportunism on the part of Reandco paid off for them, and Britannia of Billingsgate enjoyed a successful West End run, moving on from its launching pad of the St Martin’s to the Duke of York’s in much the same way that Black Coffee had moved on to the Little. The fact that they had produced Britannia in the West End would doubtless also have secured Reandco a share of the proceeds when it was filmed two years later, just as their brief West End presentation of Black Coffee had cut them in on 50 per cent of Christie’s income from the 1931 film of her play. The reason for the rescheduling given to Agatha on her return was rather different, however. On 23 December 1931 she wrote to Max, ‘Chimneys is coming on here but nobody will say when – I fancy they want something in Act One altered and didn’t wish to do it themselves’ She also mentions that ‘Alibi may come on in New York with Charles Laughton.’³⁹

      Chimneys was eventually rescheduled to commence at the Embassy on either 23 February or 1 March 1932. On 31 December 1931 Agatha wrote to Max from the Torquay Medical Baths, ‘I’m going to have a sea water bath (HOT!) to buck me up after Christmas … If Chimneys is put on on Tuesday 23rd I shall stay for first night. If it’s a week later well I shan’t wait for it. I don’t want to miss Nineveh and shall have seen rehearsals, I suppose. By the way, Alibi is being put on in New York after being rewritten and “Americanised” by someone. Charles Laughton to be Poirot.’⁴⁰

      What Agatha didn’t realise was that Reandco were about to relinquish their lease on the Embassy. Business had not lived up to expectations and the commitment to repertory, with fortnightly productions and a permanent ensemble, whilst highly regarded in theatrical circles, was putting the company under financial pressure. Ticket prices had been lowered in the hope of attracting more customers, but the struggle proved an unequal one and Rea, ever the pragmatist, decided to cut his losses, terminating his arrangement with the venue at the end of February 1931, just prior to the rescheduled dates for Chimneys. There can be no doubt that for Rea, balancing the demands of a full-time repertory company with those of a West End theatre (the St Martin’s) and a portfolio of commercial productions was proving unfeasible.

      Ivor Brown, writing in the Observer, commented, ‘The suitable play is scarce and one fortnight of poor houses will swiftly obliterate the small profit derivable from two or three of reasonably crowded attendance. The policy of the house seems to have been to give everything a turn and balance a few high-aspiring swings with the more ordinary jollity of the roundabouts. I suspect that the management attracts the critics rather than the public when it goes for the swings and has to pay for its receipts of complimentary writing by some bestowal of complimentary seats.’⁴¹

      The Times also lamented the Embassy’s loss: ‘Valuable work in London has been done by the Embassy Company at Swiss Cottage, where under the skilful direction of A.R. Whatmore many plays … were performed in London for the first time. In its comparatively short life the company has created for itself a public which will learn with regret that the lease at the Embassy is not to be renewed and that the theatre is to become a cinema.’⁴²

      The rumours of the Embassy’s change of use proved unfounded, however, and it soon reopened under Ronald Adam, who had been its business manager under Reandco. He turned it into a club theatre, thereby avoiding the need for the Lord Chamberlain’s approval and facilitating a sometimes more radical programme of work. Andre van Gyseghem replaced A.R. Whatmore as the venue’s artistic figurehead, directing a number of notable productions including two plays starring Paul Robeson. Adam ran the Embassy until 1939, and his business model appears to have been more robust than Rea’s, with numerous plays going on to enjoy West End success.

      Chimneys, therefore, was to an extent a victim of the organised chaos of the repertory system, the very system that had given Christie her West End debut with Black Coffee. There was actually no mystery about its sudden disappearance from the schedule; she was clearly advised that it had been postponed, purportedly to enable rewrites, and the management that had optioned it then ceased their involvement with the theatre that was to have presented it shortly before the rescheduled dates. The truth is, however, that had Rea been particularly enamoured with the play he could easily have renewed his licence and facilitated its production elsewhere. Similarly Ronald Adam and Andre van Gyseghem, both of whom had been involved with it at the Embassy, could easily have acquired a new licence on the Embassy’s behalf. In December 1931 it had clearly been felt that Britannia of Billingsgate was a safer bet than Chimneys. The critics had been lukewarm towards Britannia, but it proved popular with audiences and was perhaps a more obvious candidate for a pre-Christmas West End run than Christie’s new work, particularly if they did feel that it needed rewrites.

      In any event, Alec Rea presumably felt that it was ultimately worth sacrificing Chimneys to ensure a future for Britannia. In reality, too, he must have known some time in advance that he was going to give up the lease on the Embassy, and one cannot help surmising that it was more than coincidence that the new dates for the production given to Agatha turned out to be just after the theatre’s enforced temporary closure. By the time that the Embassy and Reandco parted company Agatha was already back at the archaeological dig at Nineveh with her new husband, and the problems with Chimneys were no doubt soon forgotten. Whatever the truth of the matter, the situation had been finessed in a manner that carefully avoided putting the firm of Reandco out of favour with Agatha Christie, playwright, and they were to work together again in the future.

      It is not difficult to see why the ensemble of a small repertory theatre might have lost their initial enthusiasm for Christie’s rambling, light-hearted melodrama once they started rehearsing it. As a piece of theatre, it offers many more unwelcome challenges to the director, designer and actors than Black Coffee. The Secret of Chimneys does not immediately lend itself to stage adaptation, and limiting the action of the novel to two rooms in a country house necessitates the cutting of various multi-locational escapades in its early chapters, which are set in Bulawayo and London. As a result the stage version is burdened with a great deal of back-story and this, combined with a convoluted plot involving diamonds, oil concessions, exiled royalty from a fictional principality, international diplomacy, secret societies, an elusive master criminal, suspicious foreigners, wily assassins, blackmail, deception, multiple impersonations, unexpected guests and an unexpected corpse can make the whole thing a bit impenetrable. The Lord Chamberlain’s reader’s report, dated 20 November 1931, describes the play as ‘harmless’ and ‘melodramatic’, noting that it is ‘excessively complicated to read but I dare say will be less complicated when acted; it is naturally written’.⁴³

      Virginia Revel, the heroine of Chimneys, is very much a British ‘Elaine’, ‘about twenty-six and bursting with vitality, a radiant gallant creature’. As she becomes embroiled in various potentially dangerous exploits she exclaims, ‘You don’t know how I’m enjoying myself. After years of Ascot and Goodwood and Cowes and shooting parties and the Riviera and then Ascot all over again – suddenly to be plunged into the middle of this! (Closes her eyes in ecstasy).’⁴⁴

      The Foreign Office’s Honourable George Lomax, however, represents a more traditional view. ‘I disapprove utterly of women being mixed up in these matters. It is