Portraying the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, Paul Taylor, foreground, leads the cast of Blake Hackler’s adaptation of Agatha Christie’s groundbreaking crime novel, “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” at Theatre Three.
Jeffrey Schmidt
While she’s better known for her later Hercule Poirot novel, Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd — the third appearance of the private detective in her work — was named the best crime novel by the Crime Writers’ Association.
The London-based group cited the book’s groundbreaking ending built around an unreliable narrator, a trope then new to the mystery genre.
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Blake Hackler, best known as a member of Dallas Theater Center’s resident acting company, has adapted the whodunit into a play about to open at Theatre Three. Though he says there are limits to the ways you can promote the show, Roger Ackroyd has come into the public domain. Nevertheless, Hackler’s version is not authorized by the Christie estate.
Centered around the killing of the title character — a rich widower secretly engaged to a woman who dies by suicide after she’s blackmailed for poisoning her husband — the novel has been adapted numerous times for film, radio, television and the stage since it was published in 1926. The most recent production was in 2023 at Houston’s Alley Theatre.
We talked to Hackler, a playwright and academic who leads the theater division of the arts school at Southern Methodist University, about his adaptation. He’s currently starring as Tateh in the Theater Center’s production of the musical Ragtime. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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“It’s a seminal book in not only Christie’s work, but in detective fiction,” Hackler explains. “It rocked the world of readers. They were shocked. They were upset by it. They were thrown off. The person who was their lens is a liar.”
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The unreliable narrator is Dr. James Sheppard, who becomes Poirot’s assistant in investigating the murder. Is that what drew you to it?
What became a real challenge is how not to tip your hand to the audience. Christie does such an incredible job of it, but she has 357 pages and 50 characters. How do I keep the spirit and the shape of what she does but condense it? In many ways, this was the hardest playwriting assignment that I’ve ever had because there is so much plot, and the plot is so intricately and expertly orchestrated that to pull at any thread starts to unravel things. I had a big sheet up my wall so I could keep track of the clues, where they’re dropped and who drops them. It inspired the fear of God in me.
How does Sheppard tell the story in the novel?
We see large passages of his diary — his take — and real-time scenes, too. He’s actually very reliable in recounting the facts as they occur, except for his involvement. From early on, Poirot alludes to tiny things, like saying to Sheppard that everyone hides a secret, even you.
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What’s fascinating about Poirot?
It’s that magic that happens when a writer creates a character that’s indelible, whether it’s a Holmes, whether it’s a Poirot or a Harry Bosch. They always have quirky and unique things about them.
Poirot is Belgian. He has the famous handlebar mustache. He’s described as a small man. He’s very urbane. He’s smart, slightly caustic, always slightly ahead of everyone. But what’s also great about him is that he always admits when he doesn’t quite know everything yet. “I’m slightly lost, but I’ll get there.” He’s absolutely sure of his own skills but there is a vulnerability in him, too. He’s not a sexy guy. He’s charming but seemingly unthreatening and always being underestimated by the police force. He’s an outsider, a private detective, and not part of the establishment. He just drops in and solves everything.
Blake Hackler in Theatre Three’s production of the comedy-thriller “Deathtrap.”
Jeffrey Schmidt
You’re a busy man, between teaching, acting and directing. Why write plays, too?
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I live a pretty regimented life. I don’t go out. I prefer to be working on my projects. It brings a great sense of calm. It’s relaxing. I write with the assumption that no one will ever see it, so I don’t put a lot of pressure on myself. Now with commissions or adaptations, it’s a different thing. The joy of that is, I’m not responsible for plot. It’s like doing a puzzle. And there’s something so satisfying about that.
Details
April 16-May 10 at 2688 Laclede St., Suite 120. $37-$40. theatre3dallas.com.