Theatre 2024: Witness for the Prosecution @ Shaw Festival

During the COVID lockdown period, my friends and I amused ourselves by holding weekly Zoom meetings where we would take turns presenting a topic that interested us.  For one of my talks, I selected the life and works of Agatha Christie, the mystery writer known as the “Queen of Crime”, who still ranks second in the list of best selling fiction writers of all time, trailing only William Shakespeare.  Through the years, I have read and enjoyed many of Christie’s novels and plays as well as watching movie adaptations of her books.  Prior to attending Witness For The Prosecution at the Shaw Festival, the only live performance of a Christie play that I had watched was “The Mousetrap”, her most popular and longest running play.

Witness for the Prosecution is for the most part a courtroom drama that is based on a short story called “Traitor’s Hands” that Christie wrote in 1925, then adapted into a play in 1953.  Leon Vole is accused of murdering a wealthy spinster after befriending and charming her into making him the sole beneficiary in her will.  With means, motive and opportunity stacked up against him, Vole’s only defense is the alibi provided by his German wife Romaine who can testify that he was at home with her at the time of the murder.  Vole’s defense attorney Sir Wilfred Robarts Q.C. intends to call Romaine as his key witness but as the title of the play alludes to, she somehow ends up as a witness for the prosecuting side instead.

I previously watched the iconic 1957 film version of Witness for the Prosecution starring Tyrone Power as the accused, German actress Marlene Dietrich perfectly cast as his wife and the wily, irrepressible Charles Laughton as the defence counselor.  In the movie, the wife’s name was inexplicably changed to Christine.  Agatha Christie had deliberately selected the name Romaine to sound more foreign and exotic, which becomes an important plot point. Given the timing of the original short story which came out shortly after WWI and the play, which was adapted shortly after WWII, making this character of German descent played on any residual resentment left over from the wars that might be felt by the audience.

Known for her clever narratives and surprise endings, Agatha was not satisfied with the original ending of her short story and accordingly, added a second plot twist when she adapted the play.  The movie version took it one step further and added a final zinger.  This means that there are three different endings between the short story, the play and the movie, with each subsequent version building on top of the previous one.

Shaw Theatre’s version of Witness for the Prosecution adhered to the ending set up by the 1953 play”.  As was done for The Mousetrap, a plea is made to the audience at the end of this play to “keep the secret” of the twist ending so as not to spoil it for future viewers.  I will accede to this request and not give away the surprise ending.  Because I already knew the gist of the main twist, I did not get that same element of surprise as I did on my first exposure to the story.  As we exited the theatre after the play, we overhead two young women who obviously had not known what to expect and they were blown away by the ending.  Unfortunately, you can only experience that sensation once.

In comparison to the movie, which is my only frame of reference, the play did not have the same amount of humour and camp invoked by Charles Laughton’s pompous portrayal of Robarts.  Instead the campiness is directed at the actress playing Romaine, who is portrayed as the stereotypical “femme fatale” in a tongue-in-cheek manner.  Each time she struts on stage, her entrance is accompanied by a few bars of orchestration and a spotlight as she strikes a sexy pose.  She is dressed in the same sleek, silky jacket, skirt and hat on each appearance but the colour changes from a bright green to an orange to a bright red at the end, possibly to reflect her character arc.

Some interesting dialogue comes up early in the play when Vole refers to the murder victim as an “old woman”, then clarifies that she was 56.  When questioned by his lawyers of whether he considered that old, he remarks “you can’t call that a chicken, can you?”  These lines come straight from Christie’s play and possibly foreshadows one of the final twists.  This interaction feels even more jarring today when “60 is the new 40” and 56 would not be any adult’s definition of “old”.

During the prosecution’s cross-examination of Vole, it is mentioned that he was seen in the company of another character, with a very clear description of that character.  When the character eventually shows up, there is no resemblance to what was described.  Because of this, an important plot point that was set up by the initial interaction did not pay off at all.   I am not disparaging the concept of colour-blind casting, but perhaps the dialogue could have been slightly modified to match the casting so that Christie’s seemingly innocuous clue is not lost in the shuffle?

The play has two main sets which the action toggles between.  The first is the defense lawyers’ office where Robarts and his assistant Mayhew interview Leonard and Romaine and discuss the case. The second is the impressive court room complete with a judge perched up high with an image of the Scales of Justice appearing over his head, stenographer/clerks’ boxes, the witness box and the box holding the accused.  There is no jury box or presence of a jury on stage.  The attorneys turn towards us in the audience to plead their cases.  We are called upon to be the jury as we make our own decisions of Vole’s guilt or innocence while listening to the testimony.  In the lobby of Shaw’s Royal George Theatre were scaled down miniature models of the two sets as well as a few props from the show, which we were able to inspect during the play’s intermission.

Watching Witness for the Prosecution after already knowing how it ends took away a bit of that initial thrill of admiring Christie’s genius in spinning a twisty tale.  But this was still a fun play to watch and ultimately, a good plot is still a good plot, so we enjoyed it nonetheless. 

In 2017 there was a West-end revival of the play whose venue was London’s County Hall Court House, made up to look like the Old Bailey in the 1800s.  Some audience members were selected to sit in the public galleries and in the jury box.  That would have been a cool way to watch an old show!

Theatre 2024: The Wrong Bashir

To say that the majority of the plays in the 2023/24 season at Crow’s Theatre have been serious, dramatic, and sometimes extremely intense would be putting it mildly.  As part of this season, we watched a gripping play detailing horrific stories from the 2014 Russian-Ukraine war in Crimea and a fascinating verbatim play that describes the ordeal endured by a female chaplain who was kidnapped and tortured by a Neo-Nazi mental patient.  Even the lighter works included the frustrations and disappointments of a failed attempt to create Sidewalk Labs in Toronto, and a musical based on a small segment of the tome War and Peace that featured a suicide attempt.

While these were all excellent, well-acted and well-staged plays, it was still a breath of fresh air to finally get to see a comedy as the last show of the current season.  My husband Rich and I look to the theatre-going experience as a way to find escape and relief from all the turmoil going on in the world and welcome the opportunity to just laugh and be entertained.  I hope there will be more comedies (or “happy plays” as I like to call them) in the next season.

The Wrong Bashir is a farce by first-time playwright Zahida Rahemtualla, following that old literary doctrine “write about what you know”.  Reflecting her own heritage and culture, The Wrong Bashir deals with a multi-generational Ismaili family and the generational and cultural gaps that they face when interacting with one another.  Having grown up in Canada, the children Bashir and Nafisa are thoroughly westernized, while their parents Sultan and Najma, and grandparents (Dadapapa/Dadima) emigrated as adults and are much more traditional in their views and religious beliefs.

Photo from Crow's Theatre - Dahlia Katz

Bashir Ladha studied philosophy in university and has nihilistic views of the world which he wants to share via podcasts that he creates and attempts to play at coffee shops.  He recently moved back home since he has run out of money. His parents view his endeavours as aimless and worry that he is not involved in the Ismaili community and does not attend Khana where Ismailis gather to worship.   They are therefore thrilled to learn that their son was nominated to serve a prestigious religious position, totally ignoring the obvious fact that he does not qualify and therefore it must be a mistake.  The audience is on the joke right from the start given that the title of the play is “The Wrong Bashir”.  The antics caused by the mistaken identity ramp up as two council representatives, Al Nashir and Mansour, arrive to meet their chosen candidate and are perplexed by who they find.  As they try to reconcile the listed qualities and qualifications that led them to choose their nominee, Najma valiantly and comically tries to justify why her son would fit the bill.  The situation gets more fraught with the arrival of Bashir’s grandparents and gossipy family friend Gulzar, who heard the news through the grapevine.

The stage is set up in such a way that most of the home is visible in a linear fashion, so that you can see the living room, kitchen, dining area and hallway/front entrance all at once. This allowed for the conspiratory movement of groups of characters between the different spaces to find privacy in order to confer and strategize, eliciting the feeling of a door-slamming farce without the actual door-slamming. By the end of the first act, the two hapless councillors have realized that there are two people named Bashir Ladha in their Ismaili community and they are in the home of the wrong one.  But how to rectify the mistake without disappointing and dashing the hopes of this family?  And when Bashir finds out about the error, he is all for turning down the gig.

The mistaken identity trope produced the expected comedic scenarios.  But there was an entire extra layer of humour that catered directly to Ismaili or at least Muslim audience members who recognized gags about their customs and traditions.  In fact, some of the dialogue was actually spoken in a language native to the Ismaili but incomprehensible to those not of the culture.  In our sold-out show, which had a significant Ismaili representation in the audience, there was loud roaring laughter at dialogue or situations that did not land as well with the part of the audience who could not relate to the inside jokes.  It did not help that the sound did not travel well to the back of the theatre where we sat, making me miss the details of an important joke.  When the councilors first arrived to interview Bashir, he explained about his podcasts and examples of them were played on a boombox.  Unfortunately, the sound was so muffled that I could not hear what was said.  Yet I could tell by the horrified expression on Najma’s face and the confused ones on the councilors’, that it was something extremely inappropriate.  I also had trouble discerning some of the stronger accents used by the actors, especially when they were speaking quickly.

A few gags were more widely recognized across cultures included the plying of food on the guests, Gulzar shovelling leftovers into plastic takeout containers, and rhyming through countless names to determine the connection between Sultan and Al Nashir.  Another repeated joke involved the grandfather Dadapapa, who shows signs of dementia, going on and on providing endless blessings that required the guests to continually bow in acknowledgement.

The second act tones down the humour a bit and delves into more heartwarming concepts of family, goals and sacrifice.  We learn that Bashir’s father Sultan had to give up his goal of completing university because his family could not afford it and because they had to flee their home as refugees.  In a very touching scene, Dadapapa mistakenly thinks Bashir is actually Sultan and apologizes to him for making him to give up on his dreams.  This makes Bashir reconsider whether his life choices have been fair to his family.  In the end, The Wrong Bashir is a lively, humorous and ultimately touching comedy that can be appreciated on a whole other level for those who are familiar with Ismaili jargon and references.

Whenever possible, we try to attend the show that has a post show “talkback” where the play’s actors answer questions about their experiences.  For the Wrong Bashir talkback, we also got to hear from the playwright Zahida Rahemtula herself.  We found out that the play was written over 6 years ago and first premiered in Vancouver in 2023.  Her own father, Salem Rahemtula, played the role of Dadapapa and she incorporated situations from their own lives and stories that she heard from her grandparents into her writing.  The actress who played the grandmother revealed that this was her first acting role and that she was initially intimidated acting alongside more experienced performers.  We found out that aspects of the play changed making the transition from Vancouver to Toronto.  Initially the grandfather was Bashir’s mother’s parent instead of his father’s.  The actor playing the councillor Mousaud explained that there used to be even more slapstick in his role, but he toned it down to let the situations drive the comedy.