Murder, Marple and Me!

"The only truth in what you're about to see is that our protagonist, Miss Margaret Rutherford to most, Peggy to others, didn't want anybody to know the truth"

Margaret Rutherford was terrified of taking on the role of Miss Marple. Margaret Rutherford never even wanted to take on the role of Miss Marple.  Agatha Christie believed Marple was entirely wrong for the silver screen and especially not by the Rutherford who was best known for her comic talent.  But when the actress and the writer came together, Marple became a legend.

For most people if you ask them who is the definitive Miss Marple they will of course say Joan Hickson. However, when Margaret Rutherford was approached to play Miss Marple  it nearly did not happen for so many reasons.

In Murder, Marple and Me, Rutherford and Christie are united to unearth the poignant tragedy behind Margaret Rutherford's horror .... of horror.

I went to see a preview show of this play at The Hob in Forest Hill before it transfers to the Edinburgh Festival.  It is a superb show with a great and witty script by Philip Meeks, outstanding acting by Janet Prince and brilliant directing by Stella Duffy.

This is a one-man show (or should one say this is a one lady show?) Nevertheless, I am not going to give the plot away but will say that Janet Prince who plays Rutherford, Christie and the spinster is a delight.  She takes on the various roles not only with aplomb but spritely and with a twinkle in her eye that I would find it difficult to appreciate anyone else in the role.  She came out with some one liners that had the audience laughing out loud with sheer joy. A number of Christie books were referenced in the play as well as Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe.  There were times when the play was a bit melancholy but be assured the occasions were few and were totally appropriate with what was being said.  It is a shame that I am not going to the Edinburgh Festival because Murder Marple and Me would be on the top of my list of shows that I would have to see.  Please do go and see it.

Murder, Marple and Me can be seen at the Gilded Balloon, Wee Room from 1st to 26th August 2012.  Tickets can be purchased here. 

I do hope that they bring it back to London after the Edinburgh Festival even if it is only for a short run.  This is certainly a play that should not only be seen by all lovers of crime fiction but also and especially those who  enjoy Agatha Christie and would like to know what really happened  between her and Margaret Rutherford along with the relationship that developed.

Edinburgh Festival 2nd Report from Peter Guttridge

Sitting here in the yurt in Edinburgh listening on my iPod to Terry Reid. Yeah, I know – who he? One of the great soul voices. Made two fantastic albums – River and Seed of Memory (produced by Graham Nash) – with five great, great ballads alongside some more forgettable rock tracks. I saw him in 1971 at Sheffield Uni, supported by a certain Rod Stewart and The Small Faces. I was carrying a dead chicken in a plastic carrier bag at the time. Let’s not go there. Apparently, according to Wikipedia, I saw him at the Isle of Wight Festival a year earlier with the great guitarist, David Lindley (Tiki Torches at Twilight anybody?) but I have no memory of him there.
However, don’t get me started on who I did see there because this is a crime writing blog. The reason I mention the music I’m listening to is that I’ve been talking to GEORGE PELECANOS today by email, and he’s a music nut. (I was asking if he’d read my second novel in the Brighton trilogy and, if he liked it, say nice things but he’s stopped doing that. Damn.) And then I had a chat with IAN RANKIN over lunch and he’s still rebuilding the vinyl collection he sacrificed to CD by buying it all on vinyl again. Interesting notion. Where did I put all those Betamax videos?
DENISE MINA and STUART MCBRIDE are about to do their thing – on stage, I mean. Denise is in a Michelin man coat and very fetching red Ugg boots – she looks great except that we’re in the middle of a heat wave in Edinburgh and she’s sweltering. Of course, she lives in Glasgow – a totally different climate zone even though it’s only a 20 minute train ride away.
At lunch I was with the Scottish chapter of the Crime Writers’ Association, at their kind invitation, in a room on Princes Street with a spectacular view across to the castle. ALEX GRAY and LIN ANDERSON were on fine form, as were the Scottish crime-writing twins I’ve entirely forgotten the last name of (it’s been a long day) although I spoke most to MORNA, the twin who was sitting beside me. Of course, they did both go off to the toilet at one point so when they came back I could have been talking to her sister thereafter.
Alex and Lin are planning a Scottish crime writing festival, possibly based in Stirling. Good luck to them. I’m changing my name to McGuttridge. Shameless? I don’t know the meaning of the word.
In many ways the Edinburgh festival is a Scottish crime writers’ festival as everybody is here. Although PAUL JOHNSTON has given it a miss this year to have a holiday with his family. Lightweight.
I missed my mate QUINTIN JARDINE yesterday afternoon because I had my own events but I saw IAN RANKIN being interviewed by the aforementioned LIN. They are both Tweeters and on-stage checked in to see if anyone was tweeting about the event. Four people in the audience were. Hilarious.
Ian popped by at the lunch today, as I said, and Tweeted from the table. Never thought I’d write that sentence in my life. Check it out. (His tweet that is, not my sentence.)
Had a bracing time the other evening not with a crime writer but with SIR IAN BLAIR, former Commissioner of the Met, whose run in charge of London policing was blighted by the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. I liked him. He didn’t shirk the tough questions about that shooting and other real-life controversies but showed he knew a fair bit about crime fiction too (not to mention the real identity of Jack the Ripper).
He didn’t like the violence in the first STIEG LARSSON. That bloody Scandinavian comes up almost as much as DANBROWN used to when crime writers gather and I’ve scarcely met one who understands his success. I’ve heard a rumour that a certain ALI KARIM is also puzzled now about the fuss he originally made about it. Sanity returns to the world of crime fiction. Well, for the moment.
TONY BLACK, creator of Gus Drury, and GILLIAN GALBRAITH, the Alice Rice creator, were both on fine fettle in their joint event. And CHRIS BROOKMYRE got the bit between his teeth so much he went to do a stand-up set in the late night Spiegeltent.
S J PARRIS (in real life Stephanie Merritt, who I knew for email years when she held down a desk as deputy books editor of the Observer but never actually met until this week) was droll in describing her Tudor mystery novel, Heresy. And honest when she said her false moniker deliberately had the sound of C J SANSOM, whose Tudor Shardlake series is so successful.
And here’s a real life mystery. NICHOLAS PARSONS wandered through, looking as miserable as sin, before his main theatre event. I’ve heard from the mouths of several horses involved with Just A Minute, on BBC Radio 4, that he’s not altogether popular there. Why has no enterprising crime writer figured out a way for such a character’s fictional demise…?

Our Man in Edinburgh or Peter Guttridge on the town.....

Peter Guttridge is our man in Edinburgh. As well has chairing panels, Peter has agreed to send us a blog so we can keep up with him and fellow authors attending the Festival. So here goes with the first one....

So I walk into the yurt that acts as the writers’ room for authors at the Edinburgh book festival and all around I see crimewriters – and, for me, ghosts of crimewriters. No, I’m not going doo-lally, it’s just that a place you visit each year for a number of years holds the instant reminder of those previous visits. So over there is where the late lamented MICHAEL DIBDIN quaffed whiskey with his chair, PAUL JOHNSTON, and snarled about the ignorance of a reviewer who’d given him a bad review of his latest Aurelio Zen. That reviewer would be me and later that day IAN RANKIN led a gaggle of crimewriters (a gaggle? Maybe that should be An Alibi of crimewriters - or A Clew?) to the Oxford Bar, the seedy drinking place of a certain copper called Rebus and Dibdin and I had a very pleasing, if drunken, conversation in which I did not mention (am I a coward or sensible?) that I was That Reviewer. I stand by my review – but not enough on that occasion to admit that I’d written it.

And over there by the sandwiches and wine and whiskey I see DAVID SIMON, creator of THE WIRE, and his wife, the beautiful and talented LAURA LIPPMAN, who were here last year (or was it the year before?) for David to talk Wire-related stuff with me. I probably saved his life by calming the audience when he committed the cardinal sin of discussing cricket as if it was (intake of breath) a Scottish sport not an English one…

Today, in reality, IAN RANKIN has just wafted out. CHRIS BROOKMYRE is just arriving, looking very cheery before his evening sell-out event. REG HILL is being wry as ever in the corner there where he’sbeing interviewed by an intense young journalist. (That used to be me.) ALEX GRAY is happy to be here though in mourning for her 15-year old cat, who died this morning. JAKE ARNOTT, not really a crime-writer but nearly, is in fine fettle discussing the need for a Brighton Rock sequel whilst bewailing the classic film’s new remake. And PHILIP BARUTH, author of the literary thriller THE BOSWELL BROTHERS, mentions in passing that he’s standing as senator in Vermont in a few day’s time…

And me? Well, I’m here to chair a raft of events but I’m also carrying around – like a stupidly precious cargo – the just-arrived early copy of my new novel, City of Dreadful Night and planning the marketing for its official publication in September.

Much more later.