And Then There Were None

A dark thriller in three acts

Now available with the ending from the 1939 novel

Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes

Cast size: 11

Synopsis

Ten strangers are summoned to a remote island. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder. As the weather turns and the group is cut off from the mainland, the bloodbath begins and one by one they are brutally murdered in accordance with the lines of a sinister nursery rhyme. One of Christie’s darkest tales and a masterpiece of dramatic construction, its growing sense of dread and unfaltering tension will keep you guessing to the very end.

Play information

The living room of a house on Soldier Island, off the coast of Devon, England.

2 hours 15 minutes

Character list

Number of male characters: 8
Number of female characters: 3

Rogers
Mrs. Rogers
Fred Narracott
Vera Claythorne
Philip Lombard
Anthony Marston
William Blore
General Mackenzie
Emily Brent
Sir Lawrence Wargrave
Dr. Armstrong

Performing this play

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More about this play

In writing the stage version of her most successful and darkest novels during the Second World War, Agatha Christie responded to the mood of the times by introducing a more positive ending. The play was a smash hit in the West End and on Broadway. This alternative version of the play retains the novel's ending, and entirely uses Agatha Christie's own words.

It is high-concept and its premise is instantly gripping as well as having a profoundly archetypal feel to it. I had a strong sense of being pulled into an eerie dream – and, like the characters on the island, I could not escape.
Sophie Hannah, The Guardian

Additional information

Of And Then There Were None's alternative ending, Mathew Prichard, Agatha Christie's grandson, said in September 2015:

"My grandmother’s play has been performed successfully all over the world since its première in 1943 with an ending which is unique to the play and is not that of the novel on which it is based. There is much evidence that this was not her initial intention but was instead the result of what was perceived to be the needs of audiences at a very dark time in history. My grandmother never shied from taking notice of others’ input and the success then and since of the play vindicates her approach and their views.

"In recent years enterprising producers presenting to, perhaps, more inquiring audiences have experimented with incorporating the novel’s ending in the play. This, too, has been well received leading to a controversy as to which is the 'real' ending. I have no intention of settling this controversy. Instead, on the 125th anniversary of my grandmother’s birth, I wish to make the choice available to all producers and directors to express their view as to the writer’s intention by enabling them to choose from the 1943 (play) ending and the 1939 (novel) ending.

"Drawing on papers and correspondence at the time of production and on archive material, I have commissioned a dramatic version of the novel’s close. Both dramatic endings begin their unraveling with Lombard’s line to Vera: 'You – young, lovely, and quite, quite mad'. After that,
readers, producers and directors face the same choice that my grandmother faced."