Ten strangers are invited to Soldier Island, an isolated rock near the Devon coast. Cut off from the mainland, with their generous hosts Mr and Mrs U.N. Owen mysteriously absent, they are each accused of a terrible crime. When one of the party dies suddenly they realise they may be harbouring a murderer among their number. The tension escalates as the survivors realise the killer is not only among them but is preparing to strike again… and again…
Agatha Christie is our second-highest ranking author (JB Priestley is the highest). Her original book is the best-selling mystery in the world, and she adapted it herself into the play. In particular, she re-worked the book’s ending so as to leave someone alive to tell the story!
David Laine (playing William Blore) remembers that he was killed when a stuffed bear fell on him. Sadly this happens off-stage so we don’t get to see it! Another interesting oddity is that Steve Vere is credited with “Calligraphy”: this refers to the large picture over the fireplace showing the “Ten Little Indians” poem from the book – this is repeated in the programme
The play was produced and directed by Tony Wood, assisted by Julie.
The play called for lots of dramatic “FX”. Emma Godley had two boxes of sound effects CDs, and a carefully written cue list, saying where to find each sound: which box it was in, which CD and which track. Good so far. I suspect you can guess where this story is going, but someone borrowed a disk part-way through the week and, unknown to Emma, two disks got mixed up. So…. up comes the dramatic scene, so Emma cues up the “thunderstorm” track and turns it up loud. But what comes out instead is the sound of someone typing, at high volume!
