In 1928, one of Agatha Christie’s best novels, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, was adapted for the stage under the title Alibi. Christie wasn’t a fan of the adaptation. A love story was shoe-horned into the plot, one of Christie’s favorite characters was completely changed from an elderly woman to a young girl and, perhaps most shocking of all, Hercule Poirot was explicitly stated to be French, not Belgian! So, Christie decided to try her hand at playwriting as well by creating an original play, not an adaptation of one of her pre-existing novels, featuring Poirot. The result is Black Coffee, Christie’s first play; it was enough of a hit to ensure that she did more work for the stage and she’s probably as well-remembered now for her plays The Mousetrap and And Then There Were None as she is for her novels, so things worked out. This is a pretty fun little play, a kind of a spy caper in which Poirot is summoned to an old country house by Sir Claude Amory who believes one of his friends or employees is a spy for a foreign government; Poirot arrives approximately ten seconds after Sir Claude is murdered, so the case takes a turn. There’s nothing game changing here either in the story or in the theatricality, but it was her first play and, let’s be honest, her first novel is actually quite bad, so she gets off to a better start with plays than she did with novels. But it’s a lot of fun with a lot of juicy roles and a quick wit. I read it earlier this year with an eye to auditioning for a local production of it, but then came the Lockdown, so that plan got scuppered. Still, it was a fun, quick read, so it didn’t feel like a waste of time. 3 ½ stars.
tl;dr – Agatha Christie’s first play isn’t groundbreaking or surprising, but it’s witty, entertaining and fun; quick, smart and an all-around good time. 3 ½ stars.