A DEADLY DATE
WITH MISS MARPLE

A cozy Christie mystery delivers
the requisite red herrings, even
if the performances are uneven

In another place and time, when I was all of sixteen years old and bored out of my mind during an extended summer vacation, I picked up a book called The Sittaford Mystery by Agatha Christie, tore through it in one session, and rushed back to the library for more. Over the next two months, I devoured all sixty-six of her detective novels, all fifteen of her detective short-story collections, and a surprisingly witty and charming autobiography. One of the pitfalls of reading so many books by the same author in a row is that you begin to see the patterns in structure. Another is that over time the lesser books blur together. But even decades after I read it, the plot and resolution of A Murder Is Announced are vivid in my mind, primarily because the clue that sets the case to unraveling is a single sentence of dialogue that is three words in length. And in a particularly devious bit of mischief on the part of Dame Agatha and her editor, the significance of that sentence is disguised using typographical shenanigans. So naturally, when I was informed that there was to be a stage production of A Murder Is Announced mounted in Chicago, I leapt at the chance to take it in, if only to see how they would pull that off on stage.

Leslie Darbon’s adaptation of Agatha Christie’s A Murder Is Announced is directed by Aliza Feder and opens the 45th season of the Saint Sebastian Players, a small theatrical company who perform in the basement theater of the Saint Bonaventure Church at Ashland and Diversey. As befitting the 1940s setting of the story, scenic designer Emil Zbella’s sitting room set is resolutely and charmingly old-fashioned; comfy sofas, window seats and all.

It is Friday the 13th in Chipping Cleghorn and Letty Blacklock is sitting down to breakfast with her dear friend Dora “Bunny” Bunner. Also present are a pair of siblings Patrick and Julia, and Philippa, a young widow that Letty has taken under her wing. With a gasp, Bunny tells the assembly that a most curious advertisement is in the paper. It is an announcement that a murder will take place in the Blacklock house at 6:30 pm that very evening. The announcement throws the household into a tizzy. The melodramatic Russian cook Mitzi is convinced that she is the intended victim. Bunny is near hysterics. The young people think it’s all a silly joke. And Letty just wants everyone to calm down. But she instructs Mitzi to prepare food for the locals she knows will “be in the neighborhood” around the time of the announced murder and will stop in.

And so we have a tea party with much chatter and amusement. At 6:30 pm on the dot, the lights go out. A torch flashes through the room and a guttural voice demands that everyone put their hands up. Two gunshots ring out and when the lights are back on, Letty’s ear is bleeding, Mitzi is locked in the dining room, and the body of a strange man is on the floor. Then banging heard on the door stops and into the room come Mitzi and an elderly woman: Miss Marple has arrived on the scene.

Abby McEntee’s interpretation of Miss Marple is a curious one, giving her a dotty, quavering mien that is unlike any other Marple I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t really work for me but your mileage may vary. As a company, the performances are somewhat uneven, particularly the English accents which are frequently atrocious, but the show is held together by the trio of Jill Chukerman Test as Letty, Emilia Barrose as Bunny, and Eric S. Prahl as Inspector Craddock. All three are very fine, particularly Chukerman Test. As Mitzi, Dawn Cole has the worst vaguely European accent I’ve heard in a while but she makes it work by camping it up to the hilt. It’s a profoundly silly role and deserves to be treated as such and she gets quite a few laughs out of it.

A Murder Is Announced is a bit sluggish in the early going, but ultimately how you react to it will depend on your expectations. I wanted a cozy murder mystery set in a country house in a quaint English village, with colorful characters, red herrings aplenty, and an ingenious plot. All those boxes were ticked off. It didn’t matter that I knew who the killer was because the real pleasures to be had from this genre come from the unraveling of the plot not the denouement.

As for that memorable three-word clue from the novel; much to my dismay it would seem that in the course of his adaptation, Ms. Darbon excised that entire subplot and murder from her script. Poor Amy Murgatroyd.

Still, this was good fun.

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photos by Laura Peterson

A Murder Is Announced
Saint Sebastian Players
St. Bonaventure, 1625 W. Diversey Pkwy. in Chicago
Fri & Sat at 7:30; Sun at 2
ends on November 15, 2026
for tickets ($25–$35), visit Saint Sebastian Players
free parking in two lots

for more shows, visit Theatre in Chicago

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