A smart theater company does well to discover the value of the stage works of world-class-favorite mystery novelist Agatha Christie. Christie’s play The Mousetrap is well known for its history-making long run in England, and her Witness for the Prosecution made for a fabulous feature film. But the devilishly delightful Dame Agatha also wrote a fair amount of other whodunits for the stage, some adapted from her fictional works.
Engaging guilty-pleasure entertainments like The Unexpected Guest, Spider’s Web, and Black Coffee have been known to pack in houses in regional and summer-stock theaters as a nice change of pace. Lakewood Theatre Company in Old Hickory will present the latter — originally produced way back in 1930 — a work concerning one Sir Claude Amory, a physicist who has come up with a formula for a devastating bomb. When Amory turns up dead, the great Hercule Poirot is called in to solve the case.
The Lakewood production is under the direction of Bunny Hartman, and the cast of 13 is headed up by Phil Brady as the dandified Belgian sleuth. The show opens Sept. 18 and runs through Oct. 4, with performances Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m.Â
