I enjoy a lot of things based on Agatha Christie’s work, to be honest. There’s Poirot, with David Suchet (who is the only Poirot, because he just portrays the character so very well), but there are other films/TV series based on her books that I’ve enjoyed as well.
And Then There Were None was not a book I was familiar with, whether under its original name or one of the changed titles, so I had no real idea what to expect when I was going into the play. I think that was good, as I didn’t go into the play with any expectations of what I was about to see.
I have to say that the monologues at the beginning were a little bit boring. My attention unfortunately did wander a little bit as the characters introduced all of the reasons why they’d gone to Soldier Island…although that might have also been due to other factors, such as not realising the play started half an hour earlier than I’d assumed and trying to quietly eat food after giving myself insulin right before the house lights went down!
Anyway, once the play actually started in earnest, I found it really engaging. There was some mystery surrounding each of the characters as they interacted with each other and it became clear that none of them had actually met their host(s) in person…and then, when the phonograph recording was played, there was a rapid rise of tension. I’d originally thought that maybe all ten of the people had been responsible for the same murder(s), but the recording made it very clear that each person, or ‘soldier’, was responsible for a different crime.
The play felt very much like a slasher movie, with each of the characters being picked off by an unknown assailant in ways that matched the ten little soldier boys rhyme. It was interesting that there seemed to be a vaguely supernatural element to the play, as the spirits of some of the victims seemed to linger, staring at the spot where their body lay, There was also a really bizarre scene towards the end of the play where four of the characters start playing music and dancing. This gave such a different, weird vibe to the play as a whole, and I honestly thought that there was going to be an ending similar to that of Murder on the Orient Express.
On the whole, despite some slightly more weird moments in the play that made me think it was going for a subtly different genre, I did find this play to be engaging and filled with tension, despite the slow start. I’m definitely glad I got the chance to go and see this.