In Heidi Ambruster’s delightful new play “Mrs. Christie,” the true-life, never-solved mystery of British detective novelist Agatha Christie’s 11-day disappearance in 1926 is not mysterious at all: Under the circumstances that the playwright has cooked up, what young woman wouldn’t leave her husband and hole up in a hotel to figure out how to live the rest of her life?
The two-act play, now in a West Coast premiere at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, interweaves the plight of two distressed women in two different eras: the novelist herself and a young, contemporary American Christie fan who’s suicidally depressed. Several themes emerge: grief and death, loneliness, betrayal and perhaps, most of all, the allure of the creative urge.
Set simultaneously in both eras, the play first dives into Christie’s unhappy marriage: Her husband, Archie (Aldo Billingslea in a somewhat underwritten role), has a mistress, the fetching Nancy Neele (Kina Kantor, who’s strong in two roles). Archie professes to be willing to give up his dalliances if Agatha (an excellent Jennifer Le Blanc) will forego her writing career—she’s spending too much time with detective Hercule Poirot (who becomes a full-fledged character, played by William Thomas Hodgson with an impeccable French accent, in Act 2) and not enough time as an ordinary housewife.
The obsessive Agatha has a great internal struggle (cleverly externalized) ahead.
At the same time, the rather light-fingered American fan, Lucy (Nicole Javier), arrives in England for a little cosplay at the annual Christie festival. Soon enough, she meets another fan (Max Tachis), who reveals that he’s discovered a previously unknown notebook belonging to Christie—her final, 74th notebook. What was she planning to write?
The two fans, initially flirtatious and each now eager to be the one to solve the mystery of the notebook, quickly become competitors. Lucy is aided along the way by yet another Christie fan at the festival (the comically perfect Lucinda Hitchcock Cone). As Mrs. Christie plunders through a sort of dark night of the soul, Lucy is following her instincts, chasing clues that will eventually lead her (spoiler ahead) back in time to Mrs. Christie herself.
How Lucy and Mrs. Christie meet, and what follows at the very end, is fun, but what’s truly enticing is Armbruster’s exploration of relationships, and the ways in which the artistic impulse can be both a blessing, whether hidden or not, and a curse. Armbruster has a light touch, so the play is at times comic, at other times poignant.
In this production, every moment is polished to a high sheen, from the elegant set (designed by Christopher Fitzer) to the set changes themselves, which miraculously take place so smoothly that the audience barely notices. Cathleen Edwards’ costumes are period-perfect, as is James Ard’s equally period-perfect sound design. Wen-Ling Liao lights a perfectly choreographed and very funny fight scene in Act 2 (fight director, Jonathan Rider).
Elissa Beth Stebbins is particularly fine as two different but equally long-suffering and implacable servants.
This is the first show here to be directed by longtime TheatreWorks director of new works Giovanna Sardelli since she became its new artistic director. It feels like a harbinger of more good things to come from the Peninsula’s most important theater company.
TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s “Mrs. Christie” continues through Oct. 29 at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View. Tickets are $37 to $82 at (877) 662-8978 or theatreworks.org.