By Agatha Christie. Hunters Hill Theatre Company. Director Michael Richmond. Club Ryde. 21 Aug – 13 September, 2026
Reviewed : 22 August, 2026
Michael Richmond certainly achieves his vision to set Black Coffee firmly in 1930, the year the play premiered in London. Both Richmond and set designer Jennifer Willison have an eye for detail and verisimilitude, and the set for Black Coffee is perfect for the library of physicist Sir Claud Amory’s country home in Abbot’s Cleve 25 miles north of London in the spring of 1930.
The room is elegantly furnished and decorated. A gentle fire wards off the last vestiges of winter and velvet drapes hide the early blossoming garden outside. All is quiet and still until a door opens. Voices from the dining room break the calm and one by one the characters emerge, dressed as elegantly as the set in appropriate styles, fabrics and colours.
Black Coffee was Agatha Christie’s first venture into script writing. It premiered at the Embassy Theatre in December 1930 and moved to the West End in 1931. It sees Hercule Poirot move from the pages of six novels to the London stage in order to solve the murder of Sir Claud Amory and the mysterious disappearance of his formula for a powerful new explosive.
The plot is early vintage Christie. The suspects have been locked in the library by the wily Sir Claud who switches off the lights to give the suspect a chance to return the formula. When the lights come on, Sir Claud is dead, not of a heart attack but by poisoning. When Hercule Poirot and his friend Captain Hastings are invited to assist, they are faced with two mysteries and suspects that include Sir Claud’s family, his retainers and an uninvited foreigner.
“there are shadows … shadows everywhere.” (Lucia Amory)
Michael Richmond ensures that those shadows stalk the characters as their secrets – and their lies – stir suspicion. He keeps the pace and action tight yet still sustains the style and elegance of the time with carefully considered blocking, graceful, dignified movement and clear, concise voices.
Ross Alexander plays Poirot in a performance that is poised and immaculately timed. His Poirot is composed and calm, skilfully controlling the unravelling mystery and the indignant characters with composed sangfroid and gentle, subtle sardonicism. It must be a challenge to take on such a celebrated character, but Alexander finds delicate gestures and characteristic changes of expression – a twitch of his moustache, a raised eyebrow, a gentle admonishing hand – that establish the perspicacity and control that Christie attributed to the Belgian hero.
The faithful Captain Hastings is played with attentive watchfulness and innocent incredulity by Nathan Heinrich, who makes Hastings a follower rather than a foil, in contrast to the brash scepticism of police Inspector Japp played by Rodney Stewart.
Graham Egan plays the ill-fated Sir Claud Amory, giving the character both aristocratic bearing as well as scientific distinction before meeting his untimely death. His sister Caroline, played by Chistine Rule, is not quite so aristocratic or contained. Rule has fun with this stereotypical character’s hesitant blathering. She flits around the stage in a flurry of filmy fabrics and flustery forgetfulness as she tries to protect her nephew Richard and his new wife.
Richard, concerned by his father’s penchant of spending the family fortune on scientific pursuits, is almost but not quite a reluctant heir to the family title. Thomas Southwell makes him upright but tightly controlled. His fears and suspicions show in clenched hands, rigid smiles and shaky uncertainty – none of which are very helpful to his wife Lucia.
Having spent her childhood in Italy, Lucia carries with her a burden of secrets, and Emma Lebeuf finds underlying guilt and anxiety in the Lucia she portrays. Slight and elegant, Lebeuf creates a wraithlike Lucia whose soft face betrays an inner turmoil that hints at remorse, fear and eventually desperation.
The uninvited guest Dr Carelli is played by Julian Hall, who gives Carelli the shifty arrogance and pretentious self-assurance that make Christie’s “baddies” so sinister. Hall moves with easy grace on the stage as he establishes Carelli’s snaky malice and toxic charm.
Annalie Hamilton plays Richard’s flirtatious cousin Barbara who has an eye for Hastings and eventually tempts him away from a duty assigned to him by Poirot – much to Poirot’s disappointment.
Sir Claud’s secretary Raynor is played with appropriate diligence and guardedness by Sam McAllery, and Chris Long is Tredwell, the Butler. Gary Hill is Dr Graham, called in to certify Sir Claud’s death and Chris Long doubles as Inspector Japp’s offsider, Constable Johnson.
Together this cast presents Agatha Christie’s very first play in the style of its time and with concern for the cadence and mystique of its genre. In her biography Agatha Christie described it as “a conventional spy thriller, and although full of clichés, it was not, I think, at all bad”. She was right – and this production gives it the care and attention it deserves.