Stage review: 'And Then There Were None' tests endurance
Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Special to The Advertiser
It's a long evening at Manoa Valley Theatre for "And Then There Were None." When the Agatha Christie play at last reaches its final conclusion, it feels like director Betty Burdick took the long way home.
Three-act plays test audience endurance today, even though they were the norm when this one was penned in 1943. Although the second intermission is billed as a brief
interval, audience members with the strength to stand up and stretch look like they're unfolding after a nonstop flight in the economy section.
Christie's plot is built on a classic setup. Several guests arrive for an island weekend only to find an absent host. Then they are killed off, one by one, in ways that parallel a children's rhyme that is prominently posted over the fireplace.
The MVT production bills
itself as a "mystery-comedy," intending to wink at dated material that was originally taken seriously. And the style hyphenation doesn't end there. By the time it's through, it also tacks on "melodrama-farce."
The original crime play — also produced under the title "Ten Little Indians" — piles up more bodies than the last scene of "Hamlet," but its long first act is unbearably talky and stuffed full with back story and exposition.
The pace picks up when the bodies start to hit the floor, but before that can happen the dialogue must feed us enough individual histories to establish how the 10 victims share a common connection. Also holding back the plot are 10 actors, each searching to find a character and each with their own take on a British accent.
Most of them have fared better in other productions.
Richard Aadland plays the general, John Hunt the judge, Stephen Mead the doctor, and Victoria Gail-White the tough old lady. David Starr and Regina Ewing play the household staff, while Jessica Ciufo and George Ramirez are the young couple. Tom Smith doubles in a couple of small roles and Shawn Anthony Thomsen pulls out laugh lines from even the most dense dialogue, creating a character that Christie may not have had in mind.
The unique plot is filled with false clues and switchbacks, and the final surprise might be shocking if the material had not already gone numb from production fatigue.
Set designer Karen Archibald abandons any charm that might result from a pretty country house by taking her cue from a line that describes the place as "plain." Her version is a drab bunker with ugly proportions, mismatched windows, catch-all furniture, and a miserably ugly fireplace that never sees a flame.
The technical crew, however, works up a convincing rainstorm, complete with thunder and lightning.
Plots like this one ask audiences not to reveal the ending and spoil the show. This production manages to spoil the show without any outside help.
'AND THEN THERE WERE NONE'
7:30 p.m Wednesdays-Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays; through May 25. Additional performance, 3 p.m. May 24.
Manoa Valley Theatre
$25, $20, $15
988-6131
Joseph T. Rozmiarek has been reviewing theater performances in Hawai'i since 1973.
