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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.<\/p>\n
Jeffrey Schmidt<\/p>\n
While she\u2019s better known for her later Hercule Poirot novel, Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie\u2019s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd \u2014 the third appearance of the private detective in her work \u2014 was named the best crime novel by the Crime Writers\u2019 Association.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The London-based group cited the book\u2019s groundbreaking ending built around an unreliable narrator, a trope then new to the mystery genre.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Blake Hackler, best known as a member of Dallas Theater Center<\/a>\u2019s resident acting company, has adapted the whodunit into a play about to open at Theatre Three<\/a>. Though he says there are limits to the ways you can promote the show, Roger\u00a0Ackroyd has come into the public domain. Nevertheless, Hackler\u2019s version is not authorized by the Christie estate.\u00a0<\/p>\n Centered around the killing of the title character \u2014 a rich widower secretly engaged to a woman who dies by suicide after she\u2019s blackmailed for poisoning her husband \u2014 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\u2019s Alley Theatre.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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\u2019s currently starring as Tateh in the Theater Center\u2019s production of the musical Ragtime<\/a>. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u00a0<\/p>\n Make Dallas News a preferred source so your search results prioritize writing by actual people, not AI.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a seminal book in not only Christie’s work, but in detective fiction,\u201d Hackler explains. \u201cIt 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.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The unreliable narrator is Dr. James Sheppard, who becomes Poirot\u2019s assistant in investigating the murder. Is that what drew you to it?\u00a0<\/p>\n 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\u2019ve 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n How does Sheppard tell the story in the novel?\u00a0<\/p>\n We see large passages of his diary \u2014 his take \u2014 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n What\u2019s fascinating about Poirot?\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s that magic that happens when a writer creates a character that\u2019s indelible, whether it’s a Holmes, whether it’s a Poirot or a Harry Bosch. They always have quirky and unique things about them.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.”\u00a0He’s absolutely sure of his own skills but there is a vulnerability in him, too. He\u2019s not a sexy guy. He\u2019s charming but seemingly unthreatening and always being underestimated by the police force. He\u2019s an outsider, a private detective, and not part of the establishment. He just drops in and solves everything.\u00a0<\/p>\n Blake Hackler in Theatre Three’s production of the comedy-thriller “Deathtrap.”<\/p>\n Jeffrey Schmidt<\/p>\n You\u2019re a busy man, between teaching, acting and directing. Why write plays, too?\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n By signing up, you agree to our Terms Of Use<\/a> and acknowledge that your information will be used as described in our Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n I live a pretty regimented life. I don\u2019t go out. I prefer to be working on my projects. It brings a great sense of calm. It\u2019s 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\u2019s like doing a puzzle. And there’s something so satisfying about that.\u00a0<\/p>\n Details\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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