Continued: "The Hollow" entertains as its murder mystery unfolds

Starting Gate Productions concludes its season devoted to women playwrights with Agatha Christie's "The Hollow." Christie was not a great playwright, but she certainly knew her way around a murder mystery, and in Starting Gate's idiomatic production, it makes for first-rate entertainment.

This entire production conveyed the aura of another age. In the early 1950s, a group of elegant Brits gather at a country house for the weekend. And it is so veddy British! The play evolves at a rather languorous pace, with a long exposition, slowly introducing the characters and the complex network of relationships. Add an element of romantic melodrama to the mystery and this is a very old-fashioned evening.

In the garden room of their estate, The Hollow, Sir Henry and Lady Lucy Angkatell are entertaining variously related cousins, Henrietta Angkatell, Edward Angkatell and Midge Harvey, as well as Dr. John Cristow, his wife, his mistress, and an ex-mistress desirous of rekindling the affair. Murder inevitably ensues.

Director Ellen Fenster handles the material deftly, creating many clever bits of business that keep the action moving. She honors the genre without taking it too seriously, effectively laying out the mystery while having fun with it and with the eccentricities of the British upper classes.

Fenster plays the three acts as two, with only one intermission, an approach more dramatically effective than Christie's original.

The performances are more variable, some barely rising to the level of community theatre. Pride of place goes to Bridgette McGehee. She plays Lady Lucy as a character out of Noel Coward, and her daffy brilliance steals every scene she's in. Corey de Danann as the tart yet passionate Henrietta and Lucas Gerstner as the effete yet romantic Edward also have effective moments. Dwight Gunderson's starchy, stuffy butler has great wit.

Sara Brown's set is more functional than really attractive, but it provides the requisite doors to accommodate all the action. Becca Rodger's costumes effectively evoke both the period and the class.

Whatever the weaknesses of the script or the production, this is the work of a master technician, with a trademark Agatha Christie twist at the end. I tried to solve the mystery, but was taken by surprise. All in all, this made for a most enjoyable time.

William Randall Beard is a Minneapolis writer.