A Word In Edgewise: Orient Express Boarding Now at the Guthrie

When the Agatha Christie Estate offered playwright Ken Ludwig carte blanche to adapt a novel for the stage, he chose 1934’s Murder on the Orient Express. Christie herself was a dab hand at theater, penning Witness for the Prosecution, Ten Little Indians, and, of course, The Mousetrap which opened in 1947 and played–with a hiatus for Covid19– until, well…tonight.

But nor is Ludwig a novice, having written some 32 plays and musicals, doting on mystery and comedy, including his Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery, and The Game’s Afoot or, Holmes for the Holidays.

“I think the genres of comedy and mystery have a lot in common,” Ludwig explained in a 2017 New York Times interview. “Both start with the puzzle assembled, and suddenly the pieces are taken apart and thrown into the air. And then they finally come down, and all is well.”

Of course, from a full-fledged novel to a two-hour drama, there must be elisions and compressions; the novel’s original twelve suspects have been winnowed to eight, a main premise upon which the plot rides has been presented in shadows and cries before the curtain rises, and more humor and wordplay injected overall, in part, Ludwig’s usual choice, in part to keep the characters, unlike the train, steaming ahead, attempting to seduce Hercule Poirot from his suspicion that something’s not quite right with this disparate crew ‘happening’ to be traveling together on the Istanbul train off season, in the dead of winter.

Why a haughty Russian Princess, a nondescript Swedish missionary, a Countess, a governess returning from Baghdad, an unpleasant American businessman and his secretary, a Colonel, and a frisky grandmother “from the beautiful garden state of Minnesota”? None of whom admit any knowledge or connection with the others.

Christie took as her sources the tragic abduction and murder of the Lindberg child, adroitly melded to events in 1929 when the Orient Express was trapped in a blizzard and her own trial by heavy flooding. Then, a matter of sorting the details, fleshing out the suspects, and calling in Poirot.

They’re barely underway when heavy snows stop the train in its tracks, the unpleasant businessman is found dead–pierced by eight stab wounds. Poirot is not happy to discover a plethora of clues, including witnesses to a second uniformed porter, of whom no trace can be found.

Christie used humor, but she was a mystery writer first and foremost. Hercule Poirot, her sleuth of the little grey cells, embodied drama, brains and humor in one tidy package, and the thrifty Christie could summon aspects of his temper as easily as tweaking a kaleidoscope. However ridicule he might appear, Poirot, powered by those little grey cells, always finds the culprit.

Surrounding all is the glorious Oriental Express embodying plenty, from luxe to louche, while lighting legerdemain, sound, movement draw the viewer into a magical world where each actor inhabits his or her character, from Michele Barber’s Olympian Russian Princess Dragomiroff, to tall, handsome Andrew May settling into Poirot’s prickly skin, to Sally Wingert reveling as bawdy, raucous Minnesotan Mrs. Hubbard (to Bouc:) “You remind me of one of my husbands.” Bouc: “Which one?” Mrs.H: “The next one.”

The evening’s journey is a pure joy. Names are named; truths are revealed. Scattered pieces do fall back in place, leaving Poirot with a single loose thread, such as carpet makers leave on a fine piece, lest they offend the gods.

At the Guthrie through 2 July. All aboard!