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There’s nothing nicer than chilling out on a Bank Holiday and when you get a chance to go see some theatre, that tops it off. The Gaiety Theatre in Dublin was the location for Agatha Christie’s Murder on The Nile, on its sixty fifth anniversary tour. The story unfolds as a group of vacationers meet onboard a boat heading down the Nile.
Onboard are a Canon, a young gent with a sense of fun, Miss Ffoliot-Ffoulkes a seemingly wealthy travelled lady along with her niece, a Doctor and a couple of newly weds and the groom’s ex. This play was adapted from Christie’s 1937 novel, ‘Death in the Nile’ and was first performed in 1944 and somehow it hasn’t aged very well. The world where these people live is very different to what we know now. This is still a world where only the wealthy upper classes could ever dream of going on a holiday like this.
The story isn’t a typical whodunit either? Where with, for example JB Priestly’s An Inspector Calls, the entire play is exploring the leads to find the answer, here, almost of the entirety of the first half of the play is building up the story. This leaves the second half of the play for the Canon to declare himself head detective trying to find out the killer before the police arrive.
‘Murder on the Nile’ is worth seeing for a number of reasons, it does portray a time in British culture and the atitudes of the wealthy. The star of the show though is Nichola McAuliffe, who recently joined the cast in place of Kate O’Mara. She beautifully transforms the character of Miss Ffoliot-Ffoulkes into a caricature of a stately well do lady. Her performance alone is worth seeing the show for.
It runs in The Gaiety Theatre until November 3rd.