Black Coffee is a play by the British crime-fiction author Agatha Christie (1890–1976) which was produced initially in 1930. The first piece that Christie wrote for the stage, it launched a successful second career for her as a playwright.
Last night I saw Black Coffee at Hedgerow with my oldest and youngest daughters; Kimmy Kat and J.B. Moonbeam. There's a twenty-four year difference in their ages, not that this has anything to do with Black Coffee, it's just that I like to confuse things by throwing in extraneous information. I'm famous for it, just like my grandmother before me. I am seventeen years older than Kimmy Kat, and forty-one years older than Moonbeam. Now then, if I am eighteen years older than Carrie Pat, twenty years older than Collamare, and twenty-seven years older than Seany Pooh ( my other three kids who were not with us last night), how old does that make me? And for extra credit: how old is each of my five children? You see, I can sometimes make good use of tangential departures by turning them into brain teasers, quests for the value of x. If you can discover my age from the information I provided, good for you. I wouldn't be able to do it myself, if the situation were reversed and I didn't already know how old I am.
I don't really want to say anything bad about the performance, but I also don't want to lie. The acting was terrible, horrendous, scandalous even. The best actor may well have been an audience member (whose name I didn't catch) who appeared on stage briefly in the role of a constable and helped to cart off the murderer at the tale end of the play. He looked very striking in his uniform and custodian helmet, displayed great posture and poise, and though he didn't say much, if anything at all, he projected a strong aura of authority with his arms folded across his broad chest, his feet spread to the proper degree and planted firmly on the stage, and his facial expression clearly dictating that he would put up with no nonsense.
Okay, so I said the acting was terrible, horrendous, scandalous, and so it was. I'm not going to attempt to dig my way out of what I've already said, I stand by every word, but I would like to add that it seems to me, after mulling over the performance for nearly twenty-four hours, there would be no better way for the cast to deliver their lines and inhabit their characters than the way they did last night and most assuredly have done and will do every night of the play's run. It's that kind of a play, trite and predictable. How do you pull of trite and predictable if not by camp? You carry it off by injecting it with perversely sophisticated appeal, making sure, of course, to be very precise with the dosage so as not to put your audience to sleep, or heaven forbid, kill them. As far as I know, no one has ever died from too much camp.
Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its bad taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy". When the usage appeared, in 1909, it denoted: ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical, and effeminate behaviour, and, by the middle of the 1970s, the definition comprised: banality, artifice, mediocrity, and ostentation so extreme as to have perversely sophisticated appeal. American writer Susan Sontag's essay Notes on "Camp" (1964) emphasised its key elements as: artifice, frivolity, naïve middle-class pretentiousness, and ‘shocking’ excess. Camp as an aesthetic has been popular from the 1960s to the present. (excerpted from Wikipedia)
Agatha Christie began writing Black Coffee in 1929, and according to the foreword to the current HarperCollins edition of Black Coffee in its novelised form, she finished writing the play in late 1929.
She mentions Black Coffee in her 1977 life story, Autobiography, describing it as "a conventional spy thriller ... full of cliches, it was, I think, not at all bad". Nonetheless, her literary agents had advised her to forget the play entirely and she was willing to do so until a friend connected with the theatre suggested that it might be worth producing.
Poirot was played initially by the well-known character actor Francis L. Sullivan who became a good friend of the author. She approved of his portrayal despite the fact that physically he was far too tall for the dapper little Belgian detective. (Sullivan stood six feet, two inches in height.) Also in the premiere cast was (Sir) Donald Wolfit, playing Dr. Carelli. Wolfit would become renowned in England as an actor-manager, best remembered for his vivid interpretations of Shakespearean roles and other big-scale classical parts.
Director: André van Gyseghem
Cast of December 1930 production:
Francis L. Sullivan as Hercule Poirot
Donald Wolfit as Dr. Carelli
Josephine Middleton as Miss Caroline Amory
Joyce Bland as Lucia Amory
Lawrence Hardman as Richard Amory
Judith Menteath as Barbara Amory
André van Gyseghem as Edward Amory
Wallace Evennett as Sir Claud Amory
Cast of 1931 production:
Francis L. Sullivan as Hercule Poirot
Josephine Middleton as Miss Caroline Amory
Dino Galvani as Dr. Carelli
Jane Milligan as Lucia Amory
Randolph McLeod as Richard Amory
Renee Gadd as Barbara Amory
Walter Fitzgerald as Edward Amory
E. Vivian Reynolds as Sir Claud Amory
Roland Culver as Captain Arthur Hastings
Neville Brook as Inspector Japp
Francis L. Sullivan Hercule Poirot
Joyce Bland as Lucia Amory
Dino Galvani as Dr. Carelli
Directed by Penelope Reed Note from Penelope
Cast
Treadwellt - Maggie Farrell
Lucia Amory - Karina Croskrey
Miss Caroline Amory - Susan Wefel
Richard Amory - Kevin Costello
Miss Raynor- Rebecca Cureton
Dr. Carnelli - Jose Ramos
Sir Claude Amory - Spencer Gates
Hercule Poirot - Zoran Kovcic*
Captain Arthur Hastings - Dave Polgar
Dr. Graham - Jerry Carrier
Inspector Japp - Shaun Yates
Constable Johnson - to be announced at curtain
*member of Actor's Equity
This is a warm, friendly and welcoming group of people who also happen to be actors, not to mention Jack's and Jill's of this or that trade. I swear it was Poirot - Zoran Kovcic, with flashlight in hand, working the parking lot when we arrived. It was a cold evening. He was wearing a knit hat and a jacket and looked every bit the part of a parking lot attendant. We exchanged greetings. He said, "Just in time for Cinderella." I said, "What?" "I'm just kidding you," he said, "but Snow White was here a little earlier." Later, when Poirot made his entrance onto the stage, we put 2 & 2 together and all agreed he was the guy in the parking lot, or a dead ringer.
Once inside, at the box office, a handsome, friendly and polite young man in jeans and T-shirt, took our information and gave us our tickets. Kimmy Kat took care of that business as she was the one who had planned the evening. At one point the young man asked Kimmy my age. She turned to me and said, "How old are you, Mom? I keep forgetting." I was astounded, or maybe just surprised, but I acted astounded. "My age? Why do they need to know my age?" The young man apologized, thinking he had offended me, and said it wasn't really necessary for me to tell my age, it's just that it was on the form, that's all. We had a good laugh over that comedic scene and then moved into a large multi-purpose room to wait for the show. Aabout 15 minutes into our wait, a handsome young man in suit and tie came into the room, took a look around, smiled, got some coffee from the urn, and then left. Yes, he was the young man at the box office, Jose Ramos, quick change artist transformed into Dr. Carelli.
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