My wife and I saw a preview performance last evening of Agatha Christie's 1926 novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, written, directed, and adapted by Mark Shanahan to the stage of the Westport Country Playhouse (in Westport, Connecticut), and we loved it. The cast was nimble, the setting including the music and sound effects was fetching, and you can't go wrong with an early Hercule Poirot story. As John Lennon might have said, "a splendid time is guaranteed for all".
A few words about Mark Shanahan: He was my student in Fordham University's MA in Media Studies Program, where we first met in 2002. I soon learned he was not only a brilliant student, but a gifted actor and playwright. Indeed, his adaptation of my novelette, "The Chronology Protection Case," was a finalist for the Edgar Award in 2002, and you'll find Mark's audiobook adaptations of that, along with my novels, The Consciousness Plague and The Plot to Save Socrates over on Audible.
You of course all know about Agatha Christie and her character Hercules Poirot. I consider her the whodunnit equivalent of science fiction author Isaac Asimov. His character Hari Seldon maps out the future, just as Poirot maps out the past, in particular, who murdered whatever suitable victim. More than 50 movies and 70 television episodes feature the fastidious, deductive detective, some in the time in which the novels were first published, others in the present day. One of the joys of Shanahan's adaptation is its zestful presence in the 1920s -- when the novel was first published -- down to the stick-like telephones and the dictaphone, which indeed plays a role in the ending (Mark learned his media well :)
Anthony Cochrane is a fine, emotive, justifiably pompous Poirot, and I especially enjoyed how he and a few of the actors talked not only among themselves but to the audience. (Just about everyone on stage is a suspect, so I'm not going to say anything more about anyone else's acting, except it all was delightful.) The story is of course a homicide mystery, but if you'd like a breath of fresh theatrical air in this hot, smokey summer, I highly recommend The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which will be on stage at the Westport Country Playhouse July 14 through August 1, 2026.
Tina and just got back from seeing Small World on stage on East 59th Street, a profound and memorable series of conversations between Walt Disney and Igor Stravinsky pitting popular culture vs. high culture, the king of animation vs. the 20th-century successor to Mozart, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky. I don't know if Herbert Gans, author of 
