BLACK Coffee was the first play written by Agatha Christie, the one that introduced the most famous detective of all time, Hercule Poirot.

The fastidious Belgian was never to appear in another stage work by the Queen of Crime, making the Official Agatha Christie Company's revival of this murder mystery one of the highlights of the 2014 theatre calendar.

Robert Powell will be the first Poirot since David Suchet'sgrand finale after 25 years on ITV last year, while Liza Goddard follows up her appearance in the Christie company's 2013 production, Go Back For Murder, by playing maiden aunt Caroline Amory in the story of the murder of ecentric inventor Sir Claud Amory at his English country estate.

"I don't think it's been done since the Sixties, and one of the reasons for that is that David Suchet has been playing Poirot for so many years," says Liza, who will be performing at the Grand Opera House, York, from Monday.

"Agatha Christie wrote Poirot out of all her stage adaptations [including Go Back For Murder, based on her 1942 novel Five Little Pigs], because she didn't think anyone could play him because of his gravitas, intelligence and humour. We're very lucky to have Robert Powell, who is so different from David Suchet's characterisation. Poirot always requires a great lightness of touch and Robert has that."

Liza makes the comparison with when she took on the iconic role of Oscar Wilde's imperious and impervious Lady Bracknell in The Importance Of Being Earnest. "Even when people asked me what it's like to play Lady Bracknell, and how was I going to make it different, you can't worry about anyone who's played her before," she says.

Now she is playing a less immediately familiar character, Caroline Amory, but enjoying the experience once more. "Black Coffee is so beautifully constructed as a play and interestingly it's one Christie work that was never done on TV by David Suchet," she says.

"I think it's fantastic having Poirot on stage and seeing him interact with all these different characters, which is fascinating to watch. What's most amazing about the play is the big reveal at the end, where the audience goes completely silent."

The maiden aunt is a classic stage role, one that Christie savoured in depicting Caroline Amory. "Caroline has stayed at home after the war to look after her brother because that's what those kind of women did," says Liza. "In the milieu that Agatha came from, they would have had ten to 12 servants and it was the maiden aunt who would have kept the house running, in Caroline's case for her brilliant scientist brother, the murder victim."

Liza describes Christie's dialogue as being "very contemporary". "The play is set in the late-Twenties with a few political comments and she's given it a great deal of humour, which is an under-rated quality in her writing," she says. "Agatha was a very funny woman but very shy. After a dinner party, she would sit in the corner knitting, listening as Max [second husband Max Mallowan] entertained all their wonderful guests."

Liza is appearing in the Black Coffee tour from January to July, and after a summer break, she will be on driving duty, transporting husband David Cobham around the country as he promotes his new book, The Sparrowhawk's Lament, The State Of British Birds Of Prey.

Plenty of black coffee will come in handy then too.

The Official Agatha Christie Company in Black Coffee, Grand Opera House, York, Monday to Saturday, 7.30pm plus Wednesday and Saturday, 2.30pm. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york

 

Powell undaunted taking on the role of Christie's Poirot

ASSUMING the mantle of Hercule Poirot after David Suchet’s 25 years as the Belgian detective might look a daunting task, but when you have played Jesus Christ, everything can be put in perspective.

Ask Robert Powell, the new Poirot on stage in Agatha Christie’s Black Coffee, who will forever be associated with his title role in Franco Zeffirelli’s epic 1977 television mini-series Jesus Of Nazareth.

“I couldn’t have expected the lasting impact of that role.

“No one ever goes into anything like that with a sense of hindsight,” says Robert, now 69. “The initial feeling, when the role was finally offered to me, was ‘I wish they hadn’t asked me’. I didn’t want to do it...”

Why not? “Because, as an actor, you know you can’t win. You go into something knowing the best you can do is get away with it, because you can’t win with a part like that,” explains Robert.

“If ambition, by definition, is something that you can’t achieve, then in order to climb to the pinnacle to try to be the best, there are grades how far you can get up the ladder, but with Jesus, you know you’ll only ever get to the foothills.

“But once you’re asked, even if you don’t want to do it, you’d be a total idiot if you said ‘No’ because you’d be left wondering for the rest of your life what it might have been like.”

After Poirot, does Robert have any roles he aspires to play as he turns 70 in June? “Do you know, I have no specific parts in mind,” he says.

How about Shakespeare’s King Lear, the pinnacle of roles for a senior actor? “I played Lear when I was 18 at Manchester Grammar School and it got reviewed in the Manchester Guardian!” remembers Robert.

“What I’d like is a nice television series to keep me busy for six, seven, eights months a year, leaving me four to play golf.

“That would be fun. That would be the dream.”

That said, Robert has never had a preference between television, film, or theatre roles, whether playing secret agent Richard Hannay in the 1978 film version of The Thirty Nine Steps; Sherlock Holmes in Sherlock Holmes The Musical; six years as permanently harassed Marc Williams in BBC1’s Holby City; or playing opposite comedian and golf partner Jasper Carrott in the sitcomThe Detectives.

“There’s no question that the easiest format is television, by a long way, if you know what you’re doing,” he says. “The hardest is theatre. It’s organic, the balance changes sometimes, so you have to have a pretty rock solid cast you like and trust – which we have for Black Coffee.”