Leonard Vole stands accused of murdering a rich widow. The stakes are high – with shocking witness testimony, devastating betrayal, passionate outbursts from the dock and a young man’s fight to escape the hangman’s noose. Read more …
If you are a fan of mystery, and if you love to figure out who dunnit, you won’t want to miss Witness for the Prosecution. Agatha Christie is at her all-time best with this remarkably crafted thriller.
Can Agatha Christie still surprise a modern audience? If the Dundee Rep Ensemble presentation of Witness for the Prosecution is anything to go by then, yes.
While an entertaining production, Miller seems more interested in presenting Christie’s criminal puzzle than trying to find any current relevance to the world today.
With the bulk of the play made up of the trial itself, the crisp formality of proceedings and heightened playing style almost has you believe you're watching it in black and white.
If the genre is intrinsically unsatisfying, though, it’s still hugely entertaining - and oddly informative - to experience the Queen of Crime at her subversive best, playing us all for fools, and finishing with a magnificent knockout punch to the sexist and xenophobic stereotypes that seem, until the last 10 minutes, to be driving the drama.
This being Christie, there are several twists and turns as the plot gathers pace en route to the denouement, some of which shed new light on the characters while others make ludicrous all that has gone before. Such misgivings are almost allayed by the satisfied vocal response of the audience at the moment of the guilty party’s unmasking. If only the build-up weren’t such a slog.
Dundee Rep Theatre, Dundee from Wednesday February 24, 2016, until Saturday March 19, 2016. More info: www.dundeereptheatre.co.uk
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