TOWARDS ZERO

Haphazard casting and shaky direction make Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero the weakest Theatre 40 production since the company’s return to live, in-person programming over two years ago.

Christie’s novel and its 1956 stage adaptation (written in collaboration with Gerald Verner) combine all the elements that made Dame Agatha the undisputed Queen Of Mystery for over 50 years.

There’s an elegant country home filled with an eclectic cast of characters, at least one of whom will be murdered.

There’s also a sleuth around the house to collect clues, interview suspects, and gather them all at the eleventh hour to reveal not just whodunnit but how and why.

Not only that, but perhaps better than any other murder mystery writer in history, there’s a solution so ingenious and unexpected that few if any will figure it out beforehand (and adapters Christie and Verner add on a shocker of a grand finale to do Brian De Palma proud).

Towards Zero introduces us to the venerable Lady Tressilian (Michele Schultz), who is welcoming professional tennis player Neville Strange (Cristopher Franciosa) and his vixenish second wife Kay (Kristin Towers-Rowles) to the Cornwall home she shares with paid companion Mary Aldin (Katyana Rocker-Cook).

Also paying Lady Tressilian a visit is her longtime solicitor Matthew Treves (John Combs), understandably surprised to learn that Neville’s first wife Audrey (Holly Sidell) will be joining her ex and the second Mrs. Strange for the weekend, apparently at Neville’s request.

Completing the guest list are Audrey’s cousin Thomas Royde (Jeremy Schaye), vacationing from his plantation in Malaya, and Kay’s “decorative” young friend Ted Latimer (Michael Mullen),

And in case you think you’ll be able to predict which of the aforementioned eight will get bumped off at the end of Act One, you may be no more successful than my plus one, who guessed three times and struck out.

One does indeed get bludgeoned to death, however, leading to the arrival of Christie regular Superintendent Battle (David Hunt Stafford) and Inspector Leach (Hisato Masuyama), intent on solving the case before curtain calls.

In other words, this quintessential Christie offers the same tantalizing ingredients that made Theatre 40’s previous Dame Agatha offerings a dozen or so years ago (Black Coffee and Spider’s Web) all-around winners.

Those two productions, however, benefitted from the pitch-perfect, razor-sharp direction of the late great Bruce Gray, a man whose shoes Craig Hissong cannot even begin to fill.

To start with, Hissong has ignored a number of character descriptions (“a bronzed, middle-aged man, good-looking in a rugged way,” “his voice is dry and precise,” “a very dark, very good-looking man of about twenty-six,” “he speaks with a slight Cornish accent”) and cast these roles so willy-nilly that the “rugged, middle-aged” man becomes youthful and delicate of frame, the “man about twenty-six” comes across at least a decade older, a “dry and precise” way of speaking turns into a doddering stammer, and the “slight Cornish accent” is rendered so thick, I could scarcely understand a word of it.

Not only that, but there are so many different acting styles among the cast that it often seemed as if each cast member was directing him or herself.

At the very least, a few performances work.

Towers-Rowles may not be exactly the Kay of Christie’s novel but she’s so downright fabulous as the pouty, petulant, redheaded pistol that you wish she were in every scene, and Franciosa (who’s inherited his father’s talent and looks) is precisely the tall, handsome, athletic, suave, sophisticated charmer whom two very different women could fall for.

Rocker-Cook is just right as Lady Tressilian’s live-in companion (and the UK native’s British accent is effortless as one might expect) and Schultz’s dry, refined Lady T is spot-on as well, which makes it a pity these two are given little to do.

The rest suffer either from miscasting, or from the lack of a firm directorial hand, or from seemingly not having mastered their lines, the final shortcoming the unfortunate case with the two characters who solve the mystery, presumably through shrewdness and sharpness of mind.

At the very least, designers Derrick McDaniel (lighting), Jeff G. Rack (set), Nick Foran (sound), Mullen (costumes), Judi Lewin (wigs, hair, and makeup) give the show a professional veneer.

Towards Zero is produced by Stafford. Lindsey Neville is assistant director. Hissong is stage manager. Philip Sokoloff is publicist.

For a theater company that has recently staged four consecutive winners, it’s a painful disappointment that Theatre 40’s latest doesn’t make it five in a role.

I can only imagine the Towards Zero we might be seeing were Bruce Gray still here to score a Perfect Ten.

Theatre 40, 241 S. Moreno Dr., Beverly Hills.
www.Theatre40.org

–Steven Stanley
September 24, 2023
Photos: Casey Durkin

 

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