Styles: Costumes

Costume designer Esther Haberlen with Anne as housekeeper Dorcas

Michael as John Cavendish

Emily as Mary Cavendish, James as Arthur Hastings

Emily as Miss Cynthia Murdoch

Hastings in the altogether

Michael as Dr. Bauerstein

Mary Cavendish attends the inquest

Mary Cavendish, member of the Women's Land Army

Detail: Women's Land Army badge, handsewn by Esther

Styles: Hastings

Captain Arthur Hastings
Lieutenant George Barleigh

George: Smithy, you haven't seen any suspicious looking characters around, have you, who might be German spies?
Smith: Nein.
George: NINE? Well! The captain's got his work cut out.
- From "Blackadder Goes Forth"

The folks at ClassicMysteries.net posted a review of Styles today, including a brief podcast, detailing the relationship between Poirot and Hastings, with an emphasis on the character of Hastings. The podcast is worth a listen, and does not reveal any secrets.

So many props, so many costumes ... we are blessed to have a company of actors (saving one) for whom the mechanics of this outreach tour is familiar. Anne McEvoy has worked on three previous productions (Seven Ages of Man, Dark Lady of the Sonnets & Before the Storm) while Michael Gatto and Emily Pucell have worked on one apiece (The Brute and On the Dark Side of Twilight, respectively.)

This is the very first tour for young James Rankin, who I was lucky enough to spot last fall in Ensemble Theatre's production of Waiting for Lefty. Lisa and I were hoping to find some fresh-faced guy to play the young British officer, just home from the Front. In this first novel, Christie's Hastings is wide-eyed, a self-styled Romantic, with a sunny cluelessness. James gets this and has been running with it.

Styles: Momentum

The dudes.
First night entirely off-book. First night working with large costume pieces. The padding is interesting ... I believe I have gotten so used to sucking in my gut, that I am unconsciously trying to suck in this one (see picture above.) I need to let it all hang out, baby.

More cuts. Poirot does talk a lot at the end -- he always does, he loves that part, when he calls everyone together to show off how he figured everything out, how it all happened, and who was responsible. Christie established that in this, her first novel, and kept at it through so many of the rest.

But how to bring events to a dramatic conclusion. I believe we are going to make that work, and tonight was a good step forward. And cutting one onerous paragraph was key. Who knows? There may be others.

Styles: The Alcazar

About a week prior to the commencement of the tour every year, Daniel meets with a dozen or so residents at The Alcazar and when I am the playwright, he invites me to come along. It's an informal chat in the Kulas Music Room, we share a bit about the production and field any questions.

It really is nice opening at the same place every year, and attending this event is also very reassuring. There's always a lot of familiar faces, very friendly and glad to see us. Most were familiar with the work of Agatha Christie, and one or two had read Styles.

It was challenging, trying to be interesting about the play, when I was self-conscious about giving away too much of the plot. One participant asked if there were more than one murder, or if they took place before or during the action of the play. I looked around a little sheepishly and asked if anyone wanted to know that or not and many shook their heads no, they did not want to know. I had to apologize, you know -- spoilers.

The common perception of Poirot among those present is that he is much more peculiar than I am making him. But then, I have always been too subtle for my own good.

Styles: Saturday

Let us go have breakfast.
Saturday morning rehearsal. The magnificent Diana procured bagels, and the magnificent Anne brought fresh fruit! No doughnuts for this crew. I even brought some decent coffee.

Fragile objects. Oh dear. If there is one thing I have learned about the outreach tour, it's that we break things. However, items like these are never made out of rubber. We must be careful.

I do love fiddling with them, though. It's all right, it's in the script.

Accents include: Received, Cockney, North Country, Belgian, Serbian, and one which would be a spoiler if I mentioned it.

Today we ran through a good twenty pages, again with the doors, sardines, porcelain knick-knacks, tweezers, despatch cases, coffee cups, and imaginary dirt, stains and candle wax. Esther stopped in at the end of rehearsal and we were able to get a lot of information about what to expect by Monday, and to make additional requests. I must start working with the padding, and know where everything goes in all of my numerous pockets (small evidence envelopes, sample tubes, forceps, etc.)

Esther made this hat. It deserves its own curtain call.

Styles: Rehearsal

Cynthia mocks Capt. Arthur Hastings

Last night was a joy. Two nights of table work, three of furious blocking, and here we are, all of us largely off-book, walking (nay, running) through the play, starting and stopping, sharing ideas, making agreements, solving problems, paying attention to accents, building comedic moments, pulling back from the edge of ridiculousness ... timing, timing, timing.

Michael's got a 29-second quick change near the beginning of the play, I'm going to have to assist with that. And Anne, as the housekeeper Dorcas, she has the responsibility of taking an awful lot of fragile things on and off stage. Meanwhile, Emily is deciding whether to pose looking left, or to stretch her freakishly long neck back and to the right. I said to the right, that she would look like an Erté. She did not know what I meant.

Emily has a 20-second quick change. Who wrote this play? That's right, uh ... oh. Uh-oh.

Savoy Hotel, Mussoorie, India

SPOILER ALERT
Do not read if you plan to attend the 2012 Great Lakes Theater Outreach Touring Production of The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

Established in 1902, the hotel Savoy was a popular destination for British writers, so much so that the hotel bar was known as the Writer's Bar for decades. It was a favorite spot for the British Raj, especially those civil servants and military officers who wished to get away from the formality of Shimla, the so-called "summer capital" of British domination.

The story has it that a doctor administered a slow-acting poison to his lover in the attempt to be absent at the time of death, thus establishing a solid alibi. The murder was never officially solved, and Rudyard Kipling suggested to Arthur Conan Doyle that it might make a good starting point for a mystery. However, Conan Doyle chose not to use it himself, but instead suggest it to his colleague Agatha Christie, and she used this macabre plan as the inspiration for Styles.

However, considering Styles was her first novel and that prior to that point neither Conan Doyle nor any other author of note knew her personally, I find this tale to be somewhat ... apocryphal. Besides, it has one too many famous writers in it.

Seriously, the assumption that a young, female write must be too dumb to think of slow-acting poison on her own, that she would require a famous, male writer to provide her with such an obvious plot device, is irritating.

There is also the unsolved case of the owner of the Savoy, Lady Orme, who died after strychnine had been put into medicine she had been taking. That's another thing Agatha Christie, who worked during the war as a nurse in a dispensary, must have learned about later from some smart man; strychnine.

Did I mention the Savoy haunted? It is also haunted.

Sources:
Fearnet.com
The Hindu
Reuters