The Mysterious Affair at Styles (In Motion)

Before the proliferation of smart phones (after which time everyone became a cinematographer) capturing random moments on video was a bit more rudimentary. As I have been recalling the ten years since my play adaptation of The Mysterious Affair at Styles premiered, certain video "memories" have popped up on social media.


Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Opening Night
Alcazar Hotel, Cleveland Heights
Producer Daniel Hahn whipped out his flip-phone to record a record turnout for the Great Lakes Theater outreach tour (above). Over one hundred and twenty people attended opening night at the Alcazar Ballrooom. I promise, this is due to the enduring popularity of Agatha Christie, and not my reputation.

The first image is that of director Lisa Ortenzi, who did such a marvelous job getting this show on the road.

 

Thursday, March 1, 2012
Nordonia Hills Branch of the Akron Public Library

Ten years ago I had not yet acquired a smart phone, but I did have a laptop and used that to create this time-lapse document (above) of how our company of five brought in and put up the quite impressive and heavy set. 

Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Lorain County Community College

The second night of performance, Daniel brought his family camcorder and recorded the entire performance at LCCC. It's handheld, so of course it's a little shaky. In this clip, Captain Hastings bids farewell the his audience. Don't worry, no spoilers, and we do get to see the entire company emerge for curtain call.

“The Mysterious Affair at Styles” adapted by David Hansen from the novel by Agatha Christie is available from Playscripts, Inc.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles: Ten Years On

Playmakers, Inc.
Covington, LA (2022)

St. Valentine’s Day, 2012. My adaptation of Agatha Christie’s first novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, premiered at the Alcazar Hotel in Cleveland Heights. This would play become my first published script, and a significant moment in my life as a writer.

When it was announced that Great Lakes Theater would produce The Mousetrap at the Hanna Theatre in spring 2012, I proposed adapting one of Christie’s two (at that time) public domain works for the annual touring show. Writing this particular piece was an education for me in many ways.

For example, I had never read anything by Christie. I knew little about the First World War. I had never adapted a novel before, never written a mystery before, and I had to figure out how to present twelve characters with an allotted cast of five.

Chattanooga Theatre Centre
Chattanooga, TN (2018)

This was my sixth outreach tour as an actor, and my second as playwright. Our five person ensemble included actors I had worked with in previous tours, including Michael Gatto, Anne McEvoy and Emily Pucell Czarnota.

Two years earlier, Emily was in my play On the Dark Side of Twilight, a three-hander, with me and Dusten Welch. Our working dynamic was so familiar in that tour, that when we brought in an actor who was new to all of us for this production, we both kept calling him Dusten. That was James Rankin.

The good folks at Playscripts, Inc. chose to publish it the same year, and since that time there have been (to date) two dozen productions. Not an overwhelming number, but there are a few limitations to this particular adaptation which narrow the kind of organizations which might choose to present the show. It is brief, for one thing, no intermission.

Alaska Pacific Univ.
Anchorage, AK (2017)

Also, The Mysterious Affair at Styles is in the public domain in the United States only. There is a larger media company which manages the written work of Agatha Christie, and they carefully guard her copyrighted works. Copyright laws vary from nation to nation, and in the British Commonwealth, her work remains so.

"Loaded with many comedic moments."

- Ryan Jordan, University Echo, Chattanooga

So, no British productions. We learned this early on when an “am-dram” (as they say) licensed the work, announced auditions online, and almost immediately stated they were instead producing And Then There Were None.

Poughkeepsie Day School
Poughkeepsie, NY (2020)

Yet, within the fifty states (including Alaska) the piece is enjoying a healthy life at middle schools and high schools, as well as some fine community theater productions, most recently at a theater in the New Orleans region, and soon a charter school in D.C. It was written to have a flexible cast size (5 - 12 players, or more) and one basic drawing room set, making it a great choice for schools and smaller theaters.

To me, the most important element of the original production was when we found James to play Captain Hastings. James was only 22 at the time, and I had seen him in a production of Waiting For Lefty at Ensemble Theatre. In my script, Hasting rarely leaves the playing area, for as in the novel he is the narrator, letting the audience into the story.

"A thrill for any detective afficionado."

- Marjorie Preston, Sun Press, Cleveland

James Alexander Rankin
Great Lakes Theater
Cleveland, OH (2012)

Some twenty years my junior, he played the naive and at times foolish sidekick and sounding board to my Poirot with open-faced humor, and like Poirot and Hastings we swiftly became great friends. It was a particular delight to write my Much Ado About Nothing prequel Double Heart (The Courtship of Beatrice and Benedick) with Emily and James in mind as the young lovers. 

Next up, he is featured in the long-awaited video production of my solo performance I Hate This (a play without the baby), produced by Playhouse Square. The release of this production has been postponed as we work out the logistics of how best to use the piece as an educational product for medical professionals, and also as an aid to those who have experienced neonatal demise.

The Styles Affair? No, I'll never forget the Styles Affair.

“The Mysterious Affair at Styles” adapted by David Hansen from the novel by Agatha Christie is available from Playscripts, Inc.

Process XLVIII

Joseph Beuys

Technology was not my friend this week. Not only for my Thursday night in-class presentation on Joseph Beuys, but also my Friday morning Styles seminar for seniors. Just to remember, never incorporate YouTube into my PowerPoint, it creates a variety of confusion.

It’s not that I was reliant on the app, but how long do you try to figure it out before flying without it? It’s frustrating. It makes me look unprofessional, and I hate that.

We were to choose an artist to present and our professor had presented us with a list but I was stuck. Choose someone I was already familiar with? That didn’t seem like learning, so I asked him to suggest someone, and he chose Beuys.

I’m not going to recap what I learned here, suffice to say there is a world of art out there with which I am shockingly ignorant. How could someone be so enigmatic and significant and yet I had never heard of him?

Last night 10 Minutes to Midnight: 9 Quirky Plays for the Holidays opened at Cleveland Public Theatre to a sold out house. I think my experience deserves its own post, for now I just wish to point up the program’s content warning on the website:

Content Warning: 10 Minutes to Midnight includes adult language, and themes of domestic violence, religion, sickness, and drug use.

My two, two-minute plays alone include adult language, sickness and (egads) religion.

Holidays and holiday shows can be fraught. The Mysterious Affair at Styles is Christie’s “World War One” story, and so to close my session with the seniors at Vitalia yesterday morning, I shared the animated short "December 25, 1914" from Simple Gifts. It brought women my mother’s age to tears. But they said it was beautiful.

Cat and the Canary (film)

I have adapted Agatha Christie mysteries for the stage, The Mysterious Affair at Styles and The Secret Adversary. However, it was my older brother Henrik who was mystery-obsessive. It was he who introduced me to Hercule Poirot, Nero Wolfe, Ellery Queen, and he was quite an expert on Sherlock Holmes.

I say he “introduced” me because though throughout my childhood these tales were in the atmosphere, I didn’t take an interest. I wasn’t into puzzles and plotting, and to be honest, mysteries scared me. Someone’s dead -- and we don’t know why or how it happened? The unknown is horrifying to me.

I understand that it is the solution to mysteries than many find so reassuring, they bring order to chaos, and suggest that every problem has an answer, that all loose ends will eventually be tied. These people are also probably have religion for the same reason.

I always flash back to that moment when the victim is dying, perhaps violently, shocked, and afraid and alone. The tragedy itself is not made softer by there existing an explanation. Perhaps I am an atheist for the same reason.

My brother took me to this film once -- twice, actually. He would have been fourteen, I was only ten. We went twice on two different days, probably over a weekend. Maybe we took the bus, maybe my parents dropped us at the mall, can’t remember, I was ten. The film was Cat and the Canary, a stylish, period remake of a film made famous as a Bob Hope picture in the 30s. This 1978 version was considerably more bloody. Grisly. It was the seventies.

Cat and the Canary is one of those "bumped-off-one-at-a-time" mysteries in which the house itself is the murder weapon. I was fascinated by the twists and turns, the disappearances, the horrible, clever ways people were separated from each other, and then craftily dispatched. I was also horrified. I was unable to sleep. I was terrified someone would come through my window or stab me through the bed.

My brother was scolded for taking me to see it, to see it twice. I protested that I had asked him to take me to see it again, and so attention was turned to me. I was made to feel foolish. “If it scared you so, why would you want to see it again?”

I carried this with me as I became an adolescent and we moved into the era of the slasher film -- and cable TV. From Michael Myers to Jason Voorhees to Freddy Kruger, I abstained. I just didn’t watch them.

Now, slasher movies aren’t necessarily mysteries, but mysteries can be slasher films (see: Psycho) and I have watched each, but it is the moments of isolation and despair which frighten me the most. The Vanishing comes to mind. Never seen it, know how it ends, that’s enough to keep me awake at night.

So when it came time to adapt a Sherlock Holmes mystery into a play for children, there was more than one reason to avoid plots featuring violent crimes -- or any violence at all. When we produced Jabberwocky three years ago, there is a scene where a child confronts a bully the wrong way, by hitting back. With a stick.

It was meant to be an example of making a bad choice. And yet, talkback after talkback, this was the kids’ favorite part. It was what they best remembered, it elicited the most joyful reaction. They loved seeing that one kids hit the other kids with a stick -- and they hadn’t even seen it! The beating took place off stage, with one child character chasing the other behind a curtain and then hearing the bully cry out in pain.

Now, many of Doyle’s mysteries are murder mysteries, so it couldn’t be any of those. There are a few thefts in his tales, but none presented situations that interested me -- or more importantly, supporting characters that would interest children.

The education department brainstorm non-violent crimes, which included theft, extortion, vandalism, fraud, embezzlement, forgery, pickpocketing, arson, the receipt of stolen goods, and counterfeiting.

For the past several months, these ideas have been simmering, and I have been making notes, and reading story after story, and stringing together original ideas for a brand new mystery of my own.

Because there was one very important element lacking in all of Sherlock Holmes’ adventures, and it was that which would not only set this story apart, but satisfying a great many details of the upcoming outreach tour.

Strong female characters.

To be continued.

Witness For the Prosecution (play)

POLONIUS:
See you now;Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth:
And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
With windlasses and with assays of bias,
By indirections find directions out.
- Hamlet, IIi

Costume design by Esther Montgomery Haberlen

SPOILER ALERT: This post reveals solutions to Agatha Christie’s play Witness For the Prosecution and novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles ... and also my new play The Way I Danced With You.

Hey, look! I’m dressed up for a thing. In the early 1950s, when Agatha Christie wrote the play Witness For the Prosecution, it was in the immediate aftermath of her smash hit The Mousetrap (1952) and theater producers must have thought nothing of paying a dozen or so actors to sit still and say absolutely nothing in the role of jury members and assistant barristers.

In the Great Lakes Theater production, which closes this weekend, they continue the novel and exciting concept of seating audience members on stage (as they have done twice before in a modified “Globe Theatre” staging for Hamlet and Macbeth) to represent the jury. And for the assistant barristers the company has engaged enthusiastic members of their Board of Trustees. I am not a trustee, but I am a member of the education department and have made myself available to step in for several student matinee performances.

My job is to sit there, under my wig, take notes, and react a little. Not a lot. No distractions. I think I handle that very well. And the production is delightfully effective. I was present for the first student matinee and I have never heard such a strong reaction from an audience of middle and high school students, and I mean ever, at any live theater production I have ever attended. It was breathtaking.

Because I wondered how a modern, teenage audience would receive this work. It’s a courtroom drama, and haven’t we all seen those? Isn’t Law and Order still on every channel, all the time? And yet, there is a reason Dame Christie is the third most popular author in the English language, after Shakespeare and God. The last five minutes students were literally on their feet, there was no restraining their reaction. Backstage was quite a scene as well, no one had experienced anything like it!

Photo: Roger Mastroianni
(Great Lakes Theater)

Agatha Christie likes to put the culprit right in front of you, to make it painfully obvious exactly who is the guilty party, and then through doubt and confusion she will convince you your own conclusions were absolutely wrong.

In her very first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), the most unlikable characters are in cahoots, secretly lovers but feigning antipathy towards each other, working closely to create for the one accused a watertight alibi. Evidence is introduced late in the trial, absolving the suspect of all suspicion. And they would have gotten away with it, too, had it not been for the little grey cells of a certain Belgian detective.

Christie does nearly the same thing in her 1953 play Witness For the Prosecution (originally a short story, Traitor’s Hands, first published in 1925) by building an unassailable case, also apparently pitting lovers against each other. A last minute piece of evidence is contrived and in this case -- Hercule Poirot being absent -- the guilty party almost escapes all punishment.

In each of these two cases, Christie also plays upon an almost racist kind of xenophobia towards Germans that was prevalent in England at the time.

As it happens, my new work, The Way I Danced With You, currently in rehearsal for its world premiere at Ensemble Theatre, was originally intended as something of a mystery. I had written two short scenes, amounting to a short, forty-minute work. Each scene took place ten years apart, and how they related to each other was only revealed in the very final moments.

In time I created a third scene, between the two. It changed the nature of this mystery, and in a weekend of performances at Blank Canvas last year, it was more of a puzzle than a mystery. My own fear of leaving the audience confounded led to several decisions which, while still having created a compelling narrative with interesting characters, was not as daring as what I had originally intended.

At the suggestion of director Tyler Whidden, we have further revised the script, obfuscating certain elements which had previously been evident. Concealing that which is otherwise apparent and obvious and introducing the element of doubt. Will the audience solve the mystery?

Perhaps I have learned from Christie and thing or two about misdirection.

Ensemble Theatre presents the World Premiere of "The Way I Danced With You," opening March 21, 2019.

Great Lakes Theater presents "Witness For the Prosecution" at the Hanna Theatre through March 10, 2019

Agatha Christie's "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" adapted for the stage by David Hansen is available from Playscripts, Inc.

Top Ten Moments of 2018

Harlequinade 2018, Talespinner Children's Theatre (Photo By Steve Wagner)

This year has not been easy, for anyone, and it concludes with as much or more difficulty as it began. Moments accumulate, though, good moments, for me and for my family, and taking the time to acknowledge them is an attempt to keep them bright just a little longer.

2018 was my fiftieth year, which began with an impromptu visit to Orlando (see here), and included a beautiful weekend of performances of my play The Way I Danced With You at Blank Canvas Theatre, and catching the national tour of Hamilton at the State Theatre.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles
(Chattanooga Theatre Centre)

My son played drums in several awesome sets with the School of Rock, and I ran the Cleveland Half Marathon with Fornadel. Then there was the election, the beginning of a slow crawl out of a dark pit. There was a lot to experience, and to celebrate.

Here are ten moments, in chronological order, which stand out to me at this time.

1. “The Mysterious Affair at Styles” at Chattanooga Theatre Centre

Since its premiere six years ago, and subsequent publication, my adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles has become my most produced play. I am not yet widely produced, but a couple times a year a high school or community theater chooses this work, and I am grateful for that.

The year began with a rather stylish, intimate production at the Chattanooga Theatre Centre, and by all accounts it was a splendid evening.

The boy will bash.

To be entirely honest, I have a complicated relationship with this text. It’s Agatha Christie’s story, not mine. I have only adapted it for the stage. But I am glad that folks produce it. So I welcomed the way this company, as overheard on promotional interviews, appreciated the adaptation itself, and what I was able to bring to the novel.

2. “Noises Off” at Heights High

My daughter does enough for me to be proud of, apart from the sheer magic of her existence. She paints, she plays violin, she excels in the classroom. I have never asked her to consider the stage.

But, as her father did before her, she performed in her first full-length play as a freshman in high school. Following an enjoyable turn during the winter one-acts, she auditioned for and had a part in the spring play, Michael Frayn’s Noises Off.

Mom, a friend, and me.
(Cleveland Museum of Art)

3. Jesus Christ Superstar Live on NBC

Yeah, I like this musical. And having the opportunity to share it with my wife and children for the first time in an outstanding television production was really only part of it. We all gathered around the TV (WHO DOES THAT) at my mother’s house, where we got to view and then chat during the commercials.

At this stage in life I think of myself as the lucky one, one of the three brothers, the one who lives in the same city at mom. I get to see her a lot. Maybe not as much as I should, But we do visit a lot, go places, see things. She invited me to join her to see the Infinity Mirrors exhibit at the art museum, that was another high-point of the year.

Which is to say, I have loved spending so much time with my mother, getting to know her so much better. My father has been gone for close to three years. And while I am a little ashamed to admit it, I have had more conversation with in the past 34 months than I did in the previous forty-eight years. But that’s a good thing to know.

4. "Troilus & Cressida" for Cleveland Shakespeare Festival

Young actors on my deck.
(Troilus & Cressida cast party)

So I directed a little-performed Shakespearean problem play for the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival. That was nothing new. What was unique was working with a company of performers with whom I was not experienced, at that they were all so young.

And so I was inspired, for perhaps the first time in twenty years, to hold an opening night cast party. I mean, that’s not a big deal, in the larger sense, but it is for me. “Come over to my house.” It used to be a common refrain. With this crew, I even wondered if they would want to come. I worried I wasn’t cool enough. Isn’t that silly?

It was a great show, followed by a lovely evening. On the deck. Around the fire bowl. We were up rather late. It was a very nice time, and it is nice to have those.

5. Visiting Monticello

The wife and I love road trips, but with our schedules, and the increasingly crowded schedules of our children, most summers we speed to our location of choice (North Carolina, Maine) to begin maximum relaxation as soon as possible. I wasn’t having it this year, and suggested a stop on our way back from Topsail Beach.

Visiting Charlottesville and Monticello in 2018 was an eye-opening experience. You can read an account of our journey here. In summary, for better or worse, the whitewash is being stripped from our complicated American story, and the kids are ready to learn from it.

6. Music From the Big Love

After my wife and I had been dating for three years (not yet married) I did that thing that Gen Xers used to do for the people we were hot for -- I made a mixtape. Not just any mixtape, however. It was a chronological account of our time together to date, from 1994 to 1997.

I made her another in 2000. That was also novel. The one I created in 2003 was a bit challenging however, as something I had established as a music account of road trips, concerts and other good times needed to include not only stillbirth and 9/11 but also the birth of our first living child.

It’s a pretty amazing tape.

Since then, I have moved from cassettes to CDs to playlists, always a forty-five to fifty minute collection of songs chronicling our time together. This summer I talked it over with my thirteen year-old before presenting it to Toni. I asked him to remember what had happened the past three years.

David Byrne ft. Cleveland
(Jacobs Pavilion)

“The worst years of my life,” he said. And he was correct. The worst years of our lives. And I made a playlist out of it. We listened to it on the first leg of our drive to Maine this summer, and it went over very well. Because this is our life, and we love each other and we love music.

(Unavailable on Spotify: Hallelujah performed by Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton and COH-CAINE from "Oh, Hello on Broadway.")

7. David Byrne at Jacobs Pavilion

I’m not a live music person the way others are, but I do live a good show. My brother tipped me off that everyone at work was talking about how amazing the David Byrne tour was, and that I should catch it if possible. Even better, the tickets were a surprise from the wife!

I cannot remember the last time I was at Nautica (Jacobs Pavilion) it may have been BNL on July 4, 1995. For reals.

Me and Chennelle ... and Khaki.
(Parnell's Irish Pub)

You know, I had been a server at Fridays in the Flats in 1991, as they were putting the finishing touches on the (now) KeyBank Building. I had forgotten that the backdrop for Nautica is full Cleveland. The skyline. “Our two buildings,” as Mike Polk would say. It’s beautiful, and with the barges passing back and forth, like quiet, sliding office blocks, it’s really quite something.

Byrne and his Millennial-aged ensemble, each of whom carried their instruments, even the percussionists, constantly moving about the stage, kinetic and frenetic. The closing number was Hell You Talmbout by Janelle Monáe, which was momentous and astounding, and seemed to leave most of the largely white Gen X audience speechless, in more ways than one. But we said their names.

8. My Fiftieth Birthday Party

Toni and Chennelle threw me a joyful celebration at Parnell’s one August evening, which I have to admit was a bit of a blur. I am not at ease at parties, especially being the center of attention at one, but I wanted this. When I turned forty I was not in a good place and asked for something simple and small. We had a lovely picnic.

Oh, she said it.

This time we had a big people party which was lively and stylish and had a surprising number of young people, which is always preferable. The theme was "Dave's Decades," people were encouraged to dress in fashion from one of the past five decades. I dressed like me.

9. That Time My Wife Said "Fuck Mitch McConnell" Live on C-SPAN

10. "A Christmas Carol" Writing Contest

The year concludes, as it traditionally does, with Great Lakes Theater “A Christmas Carol” Writing Contest, which is open to middle school aged students in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.

This year was a particular joy, as we celebrated not only the award-winning work of six young writers (see video) but also the thirtieth year of the program. We connect three of the original six winners from the year 1989 with the folks at WCPN to talk the impact the contest had on their lives.


We are currently relaxing with family in Southeast Ohio. Once Christmas Day has past, the wife and I will be spending time at some local coffee shop or other, writing. Oh! To have enough leisure time to do more work.

Many thanks to all whose path I have crossed this year, you made my life the richer for it. Have a lovely holiday, if you can, and best wishes for a peaceful productive new year.

"The Mysterious Affair at Styles" at Chattanooga Theatre Centre

Poirot (Patrick Brady) & Hastings (Evans Jarnefeldt)
Chattanooga Theatre Centre
Photo by Brad Cansler

My stage adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles was first produced as an outreach tour six years ago, and published by Playscripts, Inc. a short time later. Since then it has been produced at a few high schools, college and community theaters, and most recently in a production at the Chattanooga Theatre Centre in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

An interview on WUTC 88.1 FM (Chattanooga's NPR affiliate) was broadcast yesterday, a conversation between host Richard Winham and Steve Ray, head of the Theatre and Speech Department at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and the production’s director. I am not so widely produced as to be in any way accustomed or even prepared to listen to people with whom I am entirely unfamiliar discuss my writing thoughtfully.

One element of interest during their ten-minute discussion, one point which makes this book -- Christie’s first book -- different from the rest, is that it is her "Great War" mystery. It takes place during the war, not after, which required me, when writing it, to have a crash-course in history of that period, and the many ways the war affected all aspects of British life.

In particular, the character of Hastings -- the narrator of the novel and my adaptation -- is an outsider. Not only is he new to Styles, but he is also a soldier, the only one in the story who has witnessed the horrors of the trenches first-hand, and for him very recently.

In the WUTC interview, the director Steve Ray comments:

“There’s a couple of moments that ... you see that this family in the manor do not get what Hastings is going through … And one moment where it’s kind of up-front, where a character makes a kind of off-hand comment about the war and it just takes Hastings off-guard.”

Though I haven’t read the play in years, I knew exactly the moment he was referring to. What I could not remember was whether it was an exchange taken directly from the novel, or one I had created on my own. I discovered to my delight that it was the latter.

Mary (Courtenay Clovich) & Evelyn (Dana Cole)
Chattanooga Theatre Centre
Photo by Brad Cansler

Here is the passage from the novel which inspired that moment:

“The papers, of course, had been full of the tragedy. Glaring headlines, sandwiched biographies of every member of the household, subtle innuendoes, the usual familiar tag about the police having a clue. Nothing was spared us. It was a slack time. The war was momentarily inactive, and the newspapers seized with avidity on this crime in fashionable life: 'The Mysterious Affair at Styles' was the topic of the moment." 

- The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Chapter VIII: Fresh Suspicions

And here is how I represented that moment in the script:

JOHN: ...Ghastly though, the papers. Headlines glaring, “Mysterious Affair at Styles” and all that. Rubbish. Makes you wish the war would pick up.
HASTINGS: No. Not really.
JOHN: Hmn? Anyway.

Not to pat myself on the back too hard, I am also aware that I stole Hasting’s reaction from the first episode of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

FORD: Six pints of bitter, and quickly, please. The world's about to end.
BARMAN: Oh, yes, sir? Nice weather for it. Going to the match today, sir?
FORD: No. No point.
BARMAN: Foregone conclusion, then? Arsenal without a chance?
FORD: No, it’s just that the world's about to end.
BARMAN: Oh, yes, sir. So you said. Lucky escape for Arsenal if it did.
FORD: No, not really.

What Douglas Adams wrote as an affectless observation I reinterpreted as an understated reaction to a thoughtless remark, and I am totally cool with that.

Listen to the complete interview, "Chattanooga Theatre Centre Presents Christie's 'The Mysterious Affair at Styles'" by Richard Winham, WUTC 88.1 FM (1/31/2018)

"The Mysterious Affair at Styles" continues at Chattanooga Theatre Centre through February 16, 2018.

My stage adaptation of "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" is available through Playscripts, Inc.

Twenty-Eighteen

Boxing Day, a day to assess, to look, forward, to make plans, to try and figure out where it’s all going.

I need to return to the regular habit of writing by hand every morning for thirty minutes. I used to think I need to create blocks of time -- hours, say, on a Saturday, to accomplish the writing. This is not practical, however, and was only rarely successful.

When I began writing longhand a little bit, every single day, the work mounted up. It was a highly productive time. But it takes discipline, and sleep, and each have been lacking the past two calendar years.

I have always written but since I began writing in earnest -- ten years ago -- the productions have begun, the publications followed, and the opportunity to engage and collaborate with numerous companies in town.

In the past year I had my third publication (The Secret Adversary at YouthPLAYS) revamped by website (Thank you, Dreamhost Remixer) and created work presented at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage and Talespinner Children’s Theatre.

There are only a few things in the coming year that I am able to report, though I am in negotiation to revive previously produced works, and have made a few proposals for the coming season.

Chennelle Bryant-Harris and I are co-writing a new play, The Lost Diary, inspired by a notorious piece of white supremacist fiction. A fragment of this new work will be workshopped as part of Entry Point at Cleveland Public Theatre, January 18 - 20.

Also, this coming month, the Chattanooga Theatre Centre will present a three-week run of my adaptation of The Mysterious Affair at Styles, January 26 - February 11.

In addition to new writing (and there exists new writing) one thing I have wanted to do is return to old writing. It is not necessary, of course, to bring every old idea to some kind of fruition, you could go mad doing that.

But there are certain pieces which went through considerable revision and even successful workshops which were abandoned for other projects. These Are The Times was one of these, and I was very happy to return to that this past summer. There are one or two of those abandoned piece to which I would like to return.

Best wishes to you in all your endeavors in the coming year.

The Secret Adversary: Adaptation

I am trying to write an essay on adaptation. Perhaps you have heard this apocryphal story, attributed to Michelangelo.

The apprentice asked how the master was able to take a formless marble slab and transform it into something as soul-touchingly beautiful as David.

Michelangelo took a drag on his cigarette and said, "Chip away anything that doesn't look like David."

With The Secret Adversary I have had a second opportunity to tell the story of an entire novel with one set and five actors. Writing the script I tried not to concern myself with the set - at all - but I did need to think about the players, and how many would be able to appear on stage at the same time.

Surprisingly, this book was much more challenging that The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in spite of the fact that I had limited two of my actors (myself and James) to play one character each, James as the narrator Hastings, who barely leaves the stage, and myself as Poirot. One actor played the other three other male characters.

left to right: Ray Caspio as Boris Stepanov, Brittni Shambaugh as Rita Vandermeyer, James Rankin as Mister Carter
Design by Esther Haberlen

But Adversary just has so many characters, it was challenging to narrow it down. Putting the pieces together, I tried not to think very much about how fast the actors would need to change behind the set. In fact, I was so negligent that up until today I still had a scene in which Ray would enter with a gun in Ray's ribs.

The thing about Styles is that if there are too few characters, there are too few suspects. I like to think I struck a decent balance there, and was able to maintain Christie's mystery until the last few moments.

Adversary isn't really a mystery, though there is a major reveal, though for most of the tale it is pretty obvious that if "Mister Brown" exists, he is one, the other (or both?) of two characters. The story is an international thriller, with the protagonists getting into and out of scrapes, flying entirely by their wits.

I had to chip away anything that wasn't a one-hour play, but not too much that it was no longer The Secret Adversary.

Thankfully, we once again have the great joy of working with Esther, who not only has a great love of the period (England "between the wars") but also a tremendous talent at creating fabulous looks actors can slip in and out of with great speed.

British Intelligence, Member of Parliament, ageing socialite, American millionaire, Russian royalty, German Bolshevik, Cockney thug ... and that's maybe half of them.

Rehearsals begin in ten days.

Bright Young Things

The headline in The Onion ran;  4 Hours Scrolling Through Facebook Before Bed Referred To As ‘Winding Down’ (July 22, 2015) As is often the case, even now, twenty years on, their style of satire - which often consists of just saying true things pushed to logical extreme in flat, journalistic prose - exposing an Emperor who is already entirely exposed.

Last week I asked my wife to lock me out of Facebook, changing my password occasionally so I am denied access, like locking up the liquor cabinet.

I would prefer to have the wherewithal not to procrastinate, and to do the things I am meant to do. This summer I have been much more successful at reading, putting away three novels in the past month. Some has been research, but also fiction. Currently I am on my fourth summer novel, fiction which is also research; Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh.

Totally, odd ... I had asked my father for his copy and he forgot to bring it last weekend, but then as I was searching for a book for the girl to read I found his copy on one of our shelves at our house. I have no idea how that happened.

After a brief bit of confusion I have become entirely immersed in this tale of the "bright young people" in 1920s England. The picture of the Roaring Twenties from the other side of the Atlantic has similarities to that found in America, but like looking the wrong way through a telescope.

Young adults in Great Britain, for example, were the survivors of a generation slaughtered in the fields of France and Belgium during the Great War. Privation had taken a great toll on the established class system. They all just went a little nuts, drinking, taking drugs, throwing outrageous parties, pushing the boundaries of socially acceptable behavior.

I mean, America's "Lost" Generation was also behaving this way, only we seem so depressed and decadent, the British to be entirely disaffected and possibly demented.

As I continue my exploration of Agatha Christie's second novel The Secret Adversary, there are a few important elements which are drawing into focus. In the extremely helpful tome The Detective Novels of Agatha Christie by James Zemboy (MacFarland & Co., Inc., 2008), the author notes:

... unlike (her first novel) "The Mysterious Affair at Styles", ("The Secret Adversary's") characters are interesting and fun to read about ... the reader is treated right from the beginning to two loveable young people full of life and spirit ... (p.22)

Not monied as many of those real-life contemporaries written about by folks like Waugh and Nancy Mitford, Tommy was a soldier wounded in the war and now desperate for some kind of work, Also broke and with few prospects, Tuppence could return home to her family but as a modern young woman she would rather do absolutely anything else.

The manner in which they enter their business arrangement, which at first blush is practically an extortion scheme, retains the kind of disaffected pose that is so prominent in literature about young adults at that time. Christie herself was barely into her 30s when she wrote it and her dialogue is much more breezy and hip in this book than in her first.

There's also an awful lot of attention given to their eating, whenever possible, as thought they are constantly hungry, tearing into bread and tea when they have nothing, taking the opportunity for a meal whenever possible, and Tommy in particular obsessing about the time between feeding.

Assessment

Where are we now?
Where are we now?
The moment you know
You know you know.- David Bowie, Where Are We Now

The year 2014 was a highly productive one for me. In my previous assessment, almost a year and a half ago, I reported my intent to do two very important things; read before sleep, and to write upon waking. And this I did, every single day. And there were dividends.

I wrote a play. I wrote another play. I wrote a few more things which may or may become things we might call plays. This became a ritual, and a very healthy one. My wife brought me coffee and I wrote for a half-hour, every morning. At the least.

Then, just after Thanksgiving I injured my back. To alleviate the pain, I was prescribed stretches. These took a half-hour every night, and again every morning. I lost my time. I spent far too much time online, and none writing. None, or rarely any.

But I was also directing my own play, and I had another in production. The Great Globe Itself was a success, a performance which received many positive comments:

I brought my 14 yr old daughter and she loved it. This is exactly the best kind of
outreach to bring theater/Shakespeare to the young.
- Audience member at Cleveland Heights-University Heights Main Library

Cool beans! Kudos to the writer! this play must have taken lots of research and
time. It was grand.
- Audience member at Lakewood Public Library

As someone who only partially enjoys Shakespeare, I found this play to be a delight.
- Audience member at University of Akron

Also, this.

However, directing the work was very stressful for me. I do not enjoy directing my own work, you will notice I do not attempt that very often. Directing is a skill I admire in others. Especially when that person is Alison Garrigan, who directed Rosalynde & The Falcon at Talespinner, which closed yesterday.

Rosalynde & Rusty

Sitting in the audience for this one was such a joy, listening to children and their parents and grandparents all laughing at different things, and also at the same things. I have been blessed to have had many wonderful productions of my writing, but I don't think I have seen a show from one of my scripts that so successfully incorporated a unity of movement and music, costumes and masks, and the set painting and structures, with a company working so hard and fluidly for such an extended period. It was just everything, and I could not make note of a single weak note.

Last week was crowned by a special announcement, that I have had a second play published. YouthPLAYS is an online distributor of play scripts intended either to be performed by young performers, or by adult actors for young audiences. I am delighted to announce that they will be managing the rights for Double Heart (The Courtship of Beatrice and Benedick).

Beatrice & Benedick

This makes me happy for a number of reasons. All the plays are special, but this one is more special than others. The response we received was very emotional, it goes places I have rarely gone in my work. The idea of a high school Thespian troupe performing this work is thrilling to me.

 Also, in spite of its being inspired by a preexisting work (and one by Shakespeare, at that) it is original, it tells a unique story, I wrote it in verse, it is mine. The also-published Agatha Christie piece is also certainly mine, but I have to admit I feel validated for having something truly original in my name in print, and available for production.

And suddenly, without really noticing it happened, my back is noticeably free of pain. I stopped doing the exercises about a week ago, a little over a week ago, and just forgot to do them. Because nothing was reminding me to do so. At the same time, I had renewed my resolve to read and to write, every day. Next week I have a reading of something at unit. Can't really say what it is yet. Awful folk tales. And by horrible, I mean terrible.

But there it is. Writing. Something I still do.

Twenty-Fifteen

Okay, motherfuckers. Where's my hoverboard?

Odd years are normally my favorite, and certainly the most productive. This isn't a fact or anything, just a subjective opinion.

My written work continue to spread like a an ultramicroscopic, metabolically inert, infectious agent that replicates only within the cells of living hosts, with odd productions of Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles popping up at high schools and church drama clubs.

Whether or not Acorn would allow foreign productions of Styles was put to the test this past year, and they will not. Certainly not in Britain, where they retain copyright to the book which is in public domain in the US.

Just this last week there was a performance of I Hate This at the Lowry Theatre in Manchester, and shortly thereafter I found this very interesting blog post from a gentleman, Paul Kleiman, who attended the performance and participated in the post-show discussion.

He noted that John Dayton, the actor, was brought on board perhaps a month prior to the October 15 performance and so it was decided he should hold book. Instead of being a distraction, Kleiman suggests that holding a document and reading from it provides an appropriate distance from the production - we know this is not David Hansen, we are not going to pretend it is. This actor is interpreting his experience.

I am reminded of the play 8, which was produced one night at Cleveland Play House last year. Taken from court transcripts, holding book was a necessity of the brief rehearsal period, but also reminded the audience at all times that this was not fiction, that these are the actual words that were spoken in open court, and in interviews.

As for the upcoming year, I have at least two new works that will be produced in Northeast Ohio.

Rosalynde & The Falcon will debut at Talespinner Children's Theatre on Saturday, March 28. This is my second collaboration with TCT, and I am very excited to be working with them again. I have loved everything this company has produced, and am constantly amazed at their dedication to every moment and detail of each production.

For this piece I was inspired primarily by Shakespeare's As You Like It, and also its source material, Thomas Lodge's Rosalynde, which was itself by the anonymously written, Medieval age Tale of Gamelyn, and all those folk tales that involve threatened women driven into the woods where the have adventures, meet strange men (dwarves, thieves, bears, what have you) and discover strong, important things about themselves they would never have learned at home.

It's also written entirely in trochaic octameter, but don't let that bother you.

Interestingly, another new play will debut on the exact same stage, at the beginning of the month. This year's free Great Lakes Theater outreach tour The Great Globe Itself opens Tuesday, March 3 in the Reinberger Auditorium, home to Talespinner Children's Theatre, before moving on to another 26 venues around northeast Ohio.

In brief, Globe describes with playful humor how the history of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre is a line which runs straight through Cleveland. But you have followed this blog long enough that you already knew that.

Just Published: "Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles"

The good people at Playscripts, Inc. have agreed to publish and distribute the rights of performance for my one-act adaptation of Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles. This is my first play published in the United States, and so I am understandably very pleased and happy. There are other Cleveland playwrights represented by Playscripts, including works from Eric Coble and Larry Nehring. Very curious as to what kind of interest this will generate and where. But for tonight -- huzzah!

Styles: Firestone High School

"It will be the TALK OF THE TOWN!"

And we are out. Fixed up the set, performed for a couple hundred great students is Akron, loaded-out, dumped the set at the scene shop, returned the van. In between we had our annual end-of-tour stop at the Winking Lizard in Fairlawn.

Mr. Z. at Firestone, as always was quite prepared for our arrival, and he and his team of students were extremely helpful in getting the space and lights and everything right for our production. It's a big auditorium (capacity 850+) well preserved and a he runs a smooth operation. And I understand they will be tearing it all down in a another year or so. You'll never see this kind of high school auditorium again.

You know, I didn't even do most of the heavy lifting for this tour, I left that in James and Michael's capable, youthful arms. But I am tired, my neck and shoulders are sore, and I just want to sleep for several days. It was a very successful tour, everyone says so. The people who worked on it are simply the best. I am very happy. I am glad it is over.

Styles: Quirk Cultural Center

Oh, DEAR!
The Quirk Cultural Center in Cuyahoga Falls is a charming space, a former elementary school which is managed by the city to provide art instruction and facilities to their senior community, and also acts as a space available to the public for special events. The third floor features a cute little auditorium with a curtained stage and maybe one hundred fine theater seats.

That's right. I said third floor. And no freight elevator. Still, it had wide, public school staircases which made load-in less onerous than it was squeezing into the office space we navigated yesterday. Everything went very well until load-out. The weather today has been beautiful, but also very, very windy. Our largest, heaviest set pieces are the door units, but a great, surprise gust brought one panel that had been propped against one brick wall crashing down against another brick wall. The damage is not so severe than we will not be able to clamp it to its partner and add wall paint to cover the break for our final performance tomorrow morning. It will look and work fine. I think I speak for the company when I say we are grateful it happened now, and not at the beginning of the run. The Mousetrap opens this weekend, and no one in the scene shop has time to doctor the outreach tour.

Last year our performance of Decameron at Quirk, our first visit to this site, attracted an intimate audience of retirees, bussed from a nearby retirement community. That date was in the morning, and so it was agreed that this year we would present in the afternoon. Perhaps it was the time change, and no doubt due to Agatha Christie, but we had a much larger turnout today, a spirited, adult audience looking for a good time.

"I DO NOT KNOW!!!!"
Today's talkback was fabulous, there were several Christie aficionados in the house, some who had even read Styles. They particularly favored our youthful Hastings to the rather reserved version in the David Suchet series. We had our first audience member today to announce she had suspected Cynthia, because of her male impersonations. Emily was so pleased!

Daniel said some extremely kind things before the audience today about the success of this show, and all the work everyone has put into it. I can say from experience how delighted and thrilled I have been to be working six out of seven with these four performers, who have negotiated the tour with humor and goodwill. Daniel announced that next year we will be presenting a new work, which I will be writing, and invited everyone to return next spring. The turnout for these public performances are really going to mess with our numbers next year ... I think I'm a good writer, and that this is a strong adaptation, but seriously, that's not why people were arriving in droves these past three weeks.

Tomorrow, one more performance ... and before I even begin to break down the sound system, I will be visiting the dressing room with a pair of scissors and an electric razor.

Styles: Cleveland Sight Center

Load-in, baby.
The Cleveland Sight Center is always one of my favorite stops on the tour, the audiences are always great, very vocal, and very appreciative. The talkbacks are also very interesting, just great questions, like we get nowhere else.

The actual site of the Sight Center is on Chester Avenue in Cleveland, but they are undergoing a major renovation, and have a temporary space a two-minte drive from my house in Cleveland Heights. Thank goodness this is the only year it will be necessary to schlep everything up that staircase, I commend James and Michael for their prowess in negotiating the tight spaces.

It was a good show. I was tense, I have been tense since yesterday, and it makes me snippy. Last night and this afternoon the load-in was labored and setting up in unusual spaces made for a great deal of discussion, which threw the timing of set-up. And I believe we see the end is near. One more public date tomorrow in Cuyahoga Falls, and a non-public school visit to close Thursday morning. We're tired. Proud and happy, but tired. Tired and sore.

Good show though. Very large turnout for the sight center, and we were visited by several friends who were new to the center. Great Lakes staff came, Charlie, Todd and Chris, and that's always a good to see. I always wish I could hear the audio description, this year provided by Robin (thanks, Robin!) because I think it would be fascinating. I was bummed two years ago when our Dark Side stop was cancelled due to a blizzard. I was left to only imagine how the audience would react to the description of all the vampire stuff.

Photo by Vivian Goodman
We have received a remarkable amount of media attention for this tour. Today WKSU broadcast the interview Vivian Goodman conducted at Lake Ridge Academy a week or so back. It's a really well done piece, with some great interview subjects, and sound from the performance. You can listen to the 6 minute piece here. In addition, Marjorie Preston wrote a great review of Styles in the Sun press, which you can read here.

Tomorrow we appear at the Quirk Cultural Center in Cuyahoga Falls at 1 PM. Last chance! Hope to see you there.

Styles: Lakewood Public Library

On the Dark Side ... again!
Okay. Tonight was cray-cray. That's the only way to describe it, backstage, in the house ... about the only place that was safe was onstage, during the performance.

Negotiating the space took a little more time than usual. Lakewood has a great auditorium, which is just a touch to shallow for our needs. We decided to go without the black masking behind the doors, we'd tried that before at Kendal, but figuring out our make-shift wings took a little time.

Meanwhile, a crowd was growing in the space outside the auditorium. A big crowd. Quite a big crowd. A few minutes after opening the house, we were full. Extra chairs were brought in. Children sat on the floor directly in front of the stage. People stood in the aisles, and in the doors at the rear of the house. We were packed.

However, those who did get in were a spirited crowd, in the mood for a good show. There were several actor-teachers there (thanks for the sweet text, Randy!) and relatives and friends I haven't seen in years.

The show began ... and the weirdness started. There were wardrobe malfunctions. Cues were jumped. Props blew away -- literally, blew from where they were supposed to be. Errors that had never happened before during the entire tour. And yet, none of this was noticeable to the audience. It was like insanity back there, but listening to what was happening for the audience, delivery was sharper than I have heard in days, much more spontaneous, the laughs were bigger, it was all fuel for a charged, energetic, slightly neurotic show. And a very good one.

I was amused, the moment I walked on, I heard some guy in the front say quietly, "He's skinny." Skinny for Poirot I guess, fat-padding notwithstanding. I stuck my belly out further.

Afterward, Michael, Emily and I went out with Dusten, former actor-teacher and member of the Dark Side cast (see above) for a beer and a burger. I won't say where we went ... again, there were errors. Still, awesome night, I am still wired. Many thanks to Ben and Rich at LPL, for all your assistance, loading in and out and taking such good care of us. Love Lakewood!