A skilled performance from the Poirot actor. David Suchet takes the audience on a curated journey through his life, his Poirot, and an engaging insight into Shakespeare.
Half an hour before curtain up, programmes are sold out, chattering crowds are gathering, and a giggly cohort ask the ticket office where the stage door is, making their plans for later. The allure of David Suchet (and/or Hercule Poirot), clearly runs deep.
The well-lit stage is set with two swivelling arm chairs, a side table, a mysterious cloaked item, and a large teal screen as the backdrop. Act One begins with Geoffrey Wansell, in a smart grey suit, setting the scene for the evening, telling us that over a billion people have watched an episode of Poirot, and a snippet about the Festival Theatre (neatly lifted almost word for word from Wikipedia). He introduces David Suchet, who trots onstage in a brown suit, to a rapturous welcome complete with whooping, cheering, clapping and wolf-whistling.
Together on stage, they slipped into a slick routine about Suchet’s past – a bit formulaic for my taste, with Geoffrey adding only the smallest of prompts and some faux bantering. Friends for many years, I’d have liked to see a bit more insight from Geoffrey, as you suspect Suchet could have comfortably galloped through his past without him there. The rest of Act One passed cheerfully, with engaging stories of David’s school days, and early career, through to his RSC days, told in a charming and avuncular manner. There were some rather hackneyed expressions e.g. “you make your own luck” which from someone with a very middle-class and public school background seemed a bit jarring. Some assumptions around the audience’s knowledge of theatre also fell a bit flat, but otherwise it was a well-honed and seamless performance. Act One finished with an introduction to how he got the role of Poirot, and his diligent note taking to become the Poirot that Agatha Christie wrote. The mysterious object on stage was unveiled to be his walking stick, and we heard the distinctive “Poirot” voice for the first time.
Act Two opened with a costume change, and now in full black suit and lit by a single spotlight, Suchet launched into a spellbinding rendition of Salieri’s monologue from Paul Schaffer’s Amadeus. We were then given Suchet’s self-proclaimed Highway Code to interpreting Shakespeare, keen as he is to serve his writers, as well as his directors. We whistle through examples of iambic pentameter, onomatopoeia, alliteration, plosive consonants, reeling off effortless snippets from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and two from The Tempest. We then have Sonnet 130, and he finished his Shakespeare session with “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” from Macbeth (the effect only slightly lessened by someone near me whispering along). His passion for the subject really lifts this section above Act One, and I could have listened to this for the entirety of Act Two, however, it suddenly fell back into cosy Poirot territory.
Geoffrey back in tow, we carry on, with some further nuance on how the physical aspects of the character came to life. The famous moustache was the bane of lighting directors, but the framed version was produced to much applause. The development of the voice was the climax of this section, demonstrating Suchet’s considerable prowess (and making up for three decidedly dodgy accents earlier in the performance). The show is wrapped up with the death of Poirot in 2012, and a shoehorned ITV tribute filmed at the time is shown on screen.
We finish with a standing ovation, and we file out into the night, again to the strains of the Poirot theme music. Some, no doubt, heading straight for the stage door, for a further glimpse of their hero.