By Chéye Roberson
Sentinel Reporter
Broadway and film actress Prudence Wright Holmes performed a one-woman show at the Greenwich Library on Saturday centered on the mysterious disappearance of writer Agatha Christie in 1926.
In “Agatha Christie Is Missing” Holmes, who was previously a part of a murder mystery theater company for 15 years, played Detective Clarissa Marbles, who is determined to get to the bottom of Christie’s disappearance interacting with the audience as she went along.
Christie, one of the world’s best-selling mystery writers, was missing for 11 days after finding out that her husband, Archibald Christie, wanted a divorce.
“She was just horrified, because to be divorced was really, really bad at that time,” said Holmes after the performance.
Christie then became the central character in her own “whodunit” story. Her disappearance sparked a nation-wide search for the missing British author. The news quickly spread across the Atlantic to make the front page of The New York Times.
During the show, Holmes, incorporated her audience members into the story by making them supporting characters and asking questions about mysterious and incriminating clues. At one point, Holmes pointed to a husband and wife sitting in the audience and cast them as the town constable and his wife.
She enlisted another audience member as the town chemist to read and interpret a piece of evidence—a small bottle with a label that read: “Poison. Take two drops. Often.” Holmes inquired if the chemist remembered selling this bottle to anyone recently.
Members of the audience said the show was good family fun.
“I’m a big fan of Agatha Christie, and I dragged [my husband and kids] here. I dragged them to see “Mouse Trap” too, one of her plays. I read a lot of her novels. I heard about this and it seemed interesting. It was very good,” said Juliet Kaba.
Juliet Kaba’s daughter also had a good time at the show.
“I liked how she pretended to be different characters. And I liked how she accused people of things in the crowd,” said Jackie Kaba
Each one of the characters was suspicious and had a motive to murder Christie—particularly, her husband and his mistress, Nancy Neal, who was found to be in the possession of a bloody golf club.
There was plenty of comedy infused into the play. As turns out, Neal’s excuse for the bloody golf club was that she simply needed to beat away a hedgehog that had found its way onto the green of the golf course.
At the end of the play, Holmes laid out the evidence on a table and asked the members of the audience to write down their names and what they thought really happened to Christie.
“So many suspects. So many possible guilty parties,” said Holmes.
After collecting everyone’s guesses, Holmes went tin the back room to change and re-emerged as the vanished novelist, Christie herself.
“Surprise, I’m not dead,” said Holmes as Christie, donning a lavish red dress and boas. “I did it so my husband would be accused of murder. I knew he wanted another woman.”
Christie staged her own disappearance and was later found at hotel staying under the name of her husband’s mistress. Christie claimed to have no memory of what occurred during the days she spent missing.
Holmes then returned as the Detective Marbles character to read the answers that were submitted by the audience. Many of the guesses were correct.
“With this audience, a lot did know,” said Holmes.
