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!