Agatha Christie’s detective creation Miss Marple has been adapted for film, TV, and stage in many incarnations from Margaret Rutherford (in the sixties), Joan Hickson (1984-1992), and Geraldine McEwan (2004-2008) and in this latest stage adaptation Susie Blake plays the role more in the style of Hickson and McEwan than Rutherford. Rachel Wagstaff’s adaptation of The Mirror Crack’d cleverly uses Marple’s rather static investigation model in this case with a sprained ankle as a springboard to create a stage adaption that explores different characters' recall of key moments around a murder through flashback re-enactments to accompany the witnesses’ interview with her and the Chief Inspector Craddock (Oliver Boot).
This then requires a fluid setting where characters appear while Marple reflects or chats to someone, so everything revolves around Adrian Linford’s single truck of a corridor between two see-through walls. It fails to have a sense of period, the fifties I think, but it allows for some creative moments where we see through the walls someone is listening in or for an imagined lineup of suspects. Not so clever was the poor masking of the stage left wing which telegraphed each entrance and even props being prepared for a scene or the lack of personal microphones which meant some voices were very quiet in the large Wycombe Swan auditorium. However, these are the compromises of a touring show with different size stages and although irritating did not detract from the overall quality of the production.
