Stage This article is more than 6 years oldReviewWitness for the Prosecution review – Christie thriller makes judicious use of County Hall
This article is more than 6 years oldCounty Hall, London
Lucy Bailey’s production of Agatha Christie’s ingenious courtroom drama fits perfectly in this debating chamber
We seem to be going back in time. Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance, NC Hunter’s A Day by the Sea and Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution were all playing in the West End in 1953 and are now being revived. But if Christie’s play survives best, it is because it is being imaginatively staged by Lucy Bailey in the chamber of London’s County Hall. Where once Ken Livingstone and his Tory rival, Horace Cutler, locked horns in political debate, you now have opposing counsels arguing about whether or not the prisoner in the dock, Leonard Vole, is guilty of murder.
Based on a 1925 short story and much adapted for screens big and small, Christie’s play is easily her most ingenious. The case against Vole seems overwhelming: he astutely befriended the rich old lady who was the victim, inherited all her money and on the night of the crime was seen with blood on his clothes. Yet when his German refugee wife turns against him, refuses to support his alibi and is revealed to have a shadily duplicitous past, you begin to wonder if there is a plot to victimise Vole.
The play’s appeal lies not just in its mystery but in its courtroom formality and its reminder that the law itself is a theatrical ritual: apart from the dressing-up, the rival counsels are engaged in an ostentatious personal battle in which they shamelessly appeal to the jury and seek to ingratiate themselves with the judge. All this is reinforced by Bailey’s production, William Dudley’s set and Mic Pool’s sound design, which seek to persuade us we are in the central criminal court even down to the sound of the ushers’ summons to witnesses echoing through dusty corridors.
Paradoxically, the fact that we are in a debating chamber serves to heighten the play’s theatricality. British actors are also very good at playing lawyers. David Yelland has the right smooth, upper-class assurance as Vole’s defence counsel while Philip Franks exhibits a tetchy disdain as his opponent. Jack McMullen is all butter-wouldn’t-melt charm as Vole and Catherine Steadman is guileful as his Germanic wife.
Convention says that TV has now appropriated this kind of Christie mystery but, when staged as cleverly as this, her plays can still work with a live audience. The clue, however, lies in the setting and the ability of the young Bailey, Lucy, to convince us we that we are all really ensconced in the Old Bailey.
At County Hall, London, until 11 March. Box office: 0844 815 714.
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