That’s what you get – a bit. Christie, mistress of the murder mystery, didn’t really do laughs so the result is a sort of thriller that isn’t very thrilling and a sort of farce that is very far from being Ray Cooney.
The cast give it their all, Melanie Gutteridge as Clarissa twittering and bubbling appealingly, Denis Lill super-lugubrious as Inspector Lord and Bruce Montague pouring all his Rada training and many years of experience into arch buffer Sir Rowland Delahaye.
On behalf of the Agatha Christie Theatre Company, who have taken Spider’s Web on the road courtesy of Bill Kenwright, they give it their all.
Clearly there is an audience for this sort of thing. It was there on Monday night having a whale of a time.
But nobody could surely claim that this is a good play or even a half-good one. Long before the end I had forgotten to wonder whodunit and had got hopelessly tangled up in a plot that thickens like a gravy into which a desperate cook has chucked too much powder.
