20 little Indians hit local stages

Tom Titus

There is, as they say, a first time for everything.

In nearly four decades of chronicling the local theater scene,

I’ve often encountered the same play being presented by two or more

different theater groups during the same season.

Once, a few years ago, I sat through three productions of “Steel

Magnolias” in a six-week period. (One I was obliged to review, the

other two, outside the paper’s coverage area, featured a good friend

and a good daughter in the respective casts, also demanding my

attention.)

Never, however, in my experience has there been an occasion to

review the same play opening the same weekend at two local theaters.

That’s what’s on tap this weekend with what I like to refer to as

“20 Little Indians.”

The Huntington Beach Playhouse and the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse

decided that Agatha Christie’s 1940s-era mystery thriller “Ten Little

Indians” would be an ideal play to present around Halloween. Neither,

of course, consulted the other; why would they?

The result is that the Huntington Beach version has its grand

opening tonight, and I’ll be viewing it for the Huntington Beach

Independent. Costa Mesa’s will be Saturday, and will be reviewed in

the Independent’s sister paper, the Daily Pilot, next week.

As General Custer once said, “Where did all those bleeping Indians

come from?”

Actually, there are no Native Americans in Christie’s whodunit.

The title comes from a musical ditty, much like her play “The

Mousetrap” found its titular reference in the song “Three Blind

Mice.”

The plot is a familiar one, lampooned on stage and screen (“Murder

by Death,” “Something’s Afoot,” etc.). Ten people, strangers to one

another, are invited to spend an evening on a fog-shrouded island cut

off from civilization, and one by one, they start expiring.

Who’ll be the last one standing? Well, for that answer, you’ll

have to see the show -- either in Costa Mesa or Huntington Beach.

David Colwell, who’s directing the local version, naturally hopes

you’ll check out the Civic Playhouse.

“The plays of Agatha Christie have a rock-solid technique and

structure,” he said. “And I find [and I think audiences find] their

formal similarities comforting and the working out of Dame Agatha’s

scrupulously planned plots reassuring.

“Mostly, they are popular because they are tremendous fun to

watch,” he said. “And in the theater, a Christie plot is especially

entertaining -- there it is, being worked out in front of you in

[more or less] real time. In a book, you can flip back; in a film,

you’re not in the same room with the killer and victim; in the

theater, you’ve got it all, right now, right in front of you.”

Colwell points out that Christie reworked the climax of her 1939

novel “And Then There Were None” to create the play, retitled “Ten

Little Indians.” It became a big hit in London and New York during

the 1943-44 season.

“Christie decided the stage demanded a more romantic ‘happy

ending’ and revised accordingly,” Colwell said. “Many film versions

followed, the best by far being Rene Clair’s wonderful film ‘And Then

There Were None.’ The film versions retain the ending Christie

invented for the stage -- sometimes surprising those audience members

who know the novel’s different, very chilling conclusion.

“Our production of ‘Ten Little Indians’ incorporates some of the

changes and embellishments first used in the movie ‘And Then There

Were None,’” Colwell says.

The Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse version of “Ten Little Indians,”

opening this weekend, will be staged weekends through Nov. 23 with

performances Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2

p.m. The theater is at 611 Hamilton St., Costa Mesa. For

reservations, call (949) 650-5269.

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Daily Pilot. His reviews

appear Fridays.