Review: Austin Playhouse’s Murder on the Links

(l-r) Lara Toner Haddock, Ben Wolfe, Tonie Knight, and Huck Huckaby in Austin Playhouse's Murder on the Links (courtesy of Austin Playhouse)

When we hear the name Agatha Christie, most of us likely think of the same staple elements: richly woven mysteries, enigmatic figures with hidden pasts, and of course renowned detective Hercule Poirot. Enter Steven Dietz, the playwright and director of Murder on the Links, who sees something a little different in the queen of crime's works: farcical levels of comedy.

Making its regional debut at Austin Playhouse after last year's world premiere at the North Coast Repertory Theatre, Murder on the Links features six actors portraying nearly 30 characters across two hours and two acts. Only two actors remain stationary in their roles: Ben Wolfe as Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and Lara Toner Haddock as Captain Hastings, the Holmes to his Watson. The remaining four performers (Chase Brewer, Sarah Chong Dickey, Huck Huckaby, and Tonie Knight) slide in and out of varied identities with consummate clarity and confidence in a production that wholeheartedly embraces its own slapdash energy, hitting the ground running and never letting up. Some comedic beats are still finding their footing (a fact that will no doubt be improved over the remaining performances), but for this reviewer, the production was a revelation in just how funny Christie's work can be. Interpretations of her novels are rarely lighthearted romps, but Dietz has crafted a version of her 1923 page-turner that achieves true parody. As local police Commissary Lucien Bex, Huckaby delivers a hilariously on-point portrayal of the archetypical incompetent small-town cop, throwing up his hands and marveling, "How did we miss that?" each time Poirot points out a new clue. Himself a caricature of all-knowing detectives, Poirot delightfully skewers the very archetype he's become so fine an example of, and Wolfe nails his smug self-satisfaction and almost inhuman dedication to the thrill of the mystery.

I absolutely need to spend a full paragraph on the accent work. It's a vital element in a show like this, with actors jumping between characters – and therefore accents – at breakneck speed and audiences in need of as many guideposts as possible to keep track of who's who. Hearing so many dialects vie against one another could easily become grating, but dialect coach Amanda Cooley Davis has schooled these actors well. Taken to cartoonish extremes, there is nevertheless a consistency to vowels and consonants that makes even these heightened expressions ring true. With so many accents in conversation at once, it's genuinely impressive that the actors can keep them distinct onstage – especially since Hollywood, even with the benefit of multiple takes, often fails at the same task.

The technical work throughout is competent, effective, and engaging, from Mark Novick's dynamic lighting design to Robertson Witmer and Robert S. Fisher's playfully dramatic sound cues. Set designer Mike Toner keeps the stage simple, with minimal furniture and doors represented by empty frames, and Buffy Manners provides costumes to match, with most characters differentiated by hats and coats rather than full costume changes. All of it serves to support rather than restrain the show, a true directorial showpiece that thrives on being structurally playful rather than rigidly representational. The animated staging consistently makes exquisite use of the stage.

There's a cost to the show's vigor in the form of lackluster pathos. Easing into things with a slightly more traditional structure in the opening scenes may have helped give the audience time to get invested in Poirot and Hastings, as both central characters and the core relationship of the show. The play wastes no time getting started, but that leads to a small degree of exhaustion early on, and it can admittedly be hard to follow the action through the amount of information loaded into each scene (thankfully, some very Christie-esque explanations toward the end guide the audience along the event timeline). Character arcs are also hard to identify, though perhaps that's an inevitable effect of the format – hard for an actor to juggle emotional through lines when they're continually shifting in and out of different personas.

Ultimately, though, those disappointments pale in comparison to the joy of watching a company have so much fun with the art form. Christie purists might quibble with the satirical depiction of her famous detective and his current cast of cohorts, but for the rest of us, Murder on the Links serves an excellent reminder of how clever the theatre can be.

Austin Playhouse's Murder on the Links