Agatha Christie is at her fiendishly clever best in the very long but very entertaining Murder After Hours (The Hollow), now being revived to deliciously brain-teasing effect at North Hollywood’s the Group Rep.

The Hollow in question is the London-adjacent estate of Sir Henry Angkatell (John Combs), his gardening aficionado wife Lucy (Dani Thompson), and Lucy’s sculptress cousin Henrietta (Meghan Lewis), the three of whom are about to welcome a handful of guests for a relaxing weekend in the country.

Little do they know that it will be a not-so-relaxing weekend of murder most foul.

Invited to the country manor are Midge Harvey (Rebecca Del Sesto), Lady Angkatell’s sweet, down-to-earth second cousin; estate owner Edward Angkatell (Joe Clabby), harboring a crush on Henrietta; Dr. John Cristow (Jason Culp), with whom Henrietta has been carrying on a passionate illicit affair; and Gerda Cristow (Roslyn Cohn), John’s timid, all too forgiving wife.

Add to the above the Angkatells’ movie star neighbor Veronica Craye (Gina Yates), still carrying a torch for her onetime lover John; weirdly omnipresent butler Gudgeon (Michael Robb); and novice maid Doris (Megan Deford), and you’ve got one murder victim and nine possible suspects, among them a killer whose identity Agatha Christie makes darned sure you won’t be able to guess.

Conspicuously absent is Belgian sleuth extraordinaire Hercule Poirot, who starred in Christie’s 1946 novel The Hollow, and who’s been left on the cutting room floor in favor of Scotland Yard Inspector Colquhoun (Chris Winfield) and his note-taking assistant Detective Sergeant Penny (Patrick Anthony).

While I miss The Hollow’s central conceit, one as ingenious as those that made The Murder Or Roger Ackroyd and Murder On The Orient instant classics (read the novel after you see the play and you’ll understand what I mean), this doesn’t make Murder After Hours (The Hollow) any less clever.

Playwright Christie spends Act One letting us get to know her cast of characters as we attempt to determine which of them will be meeting his or her maker, and though who done it appears at first to be a no-brainer since he or she is found holding the murder weapon, since the final word he or she utters is the name of someone else (as an accusation?), all bets are off.

Murder After Hours (The Hollow)’s two-hour-and-forty-minute running time is about half an hour longer than I’d have liked it to be, but I can’t complain about the spiffy production it’s being given by the Group Rep.

As he did earlier this year in Theatre 40’s Strangers On The Train, veteran director Jules Aaron proves himself a master of the suspense thriller, though this time round with a lighter, more comedic touch.

Not only that, but Aaron (working in tandem with sound design master Nick Foran) knows how important musical underscoring is in building suspense and uses it sparingly but quite effectively at the Group Rep.

Indeed my only complaint about Aaron’s direction is a lack of attention to gun handling, actors too often forgetting that they’re holding loaded lethal weapons that could kill someone in a heartbeat and not just props to be bandied about.

Performances are uniformly splendid, with special snaps to Thompson’s charmingly absent-minded Lucy, Lewis’s fierce and fiery Henrietta, and Cohn’s still-waters-run-deep Gerda, though it’s not just these three standouts that merit cheers in the Group Rep’s (almost) all-member cast.

Cheers are in order too for Winfield’s meticulously detailed, comfortably furnished country home set (properties by Patrick Gallagher), expertly lit by Frank McKown.

Last but not least, Shon LeBlanc costumes the cast in an elegant array of period frocks, gowns, and suits topped by Judi Lewin’s topnotch makeup, hair, and wig designs.

Murder After Hours is produced for the Group Rep by Cynthia Payo. Paul Reid is assistant director. Linda Brennen is dialect coach. John Ledley is stage manager. Nora Feldman is publicist.

I was on an Agatha Christie kick a few years back, rereading pretty much all her novels, binging on multiple TV series based on her oeuvre, and viewing every single Queen of Crime movie I could get my hands on.

No wonder then that I jumped at the chance to catch Murder After Hours (The Hollow) at the Group Rep. Though I’d rather Dame Agatha had tied things up a half-hour or so earlier, all in all I had a murderously good time.

The Group Rep, Lonny Chapman Theatre, 10900 Burbank Boulevard, North Hollywood.
www.thegrouprep.com

–Steven Stanley
August 30, 2024
Photos: Doug Engalla

Tags: Agatha Christie, Los Angeles Theater Review, The Group Rep