MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS - All An Act / ROMEO AND JULIET - McDowell Drama Club - February 7 & 8, 2020
Unsubstantial death is amorous. - ROMEO AND JULIET The impossible cannot have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances. - MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS Friday night was the murder mystery, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, Ken Ludwig's snarky adaptation of Agatha Christie's classic detective tale, a All An Act. Saturday night was Shakespeare's tragedy ROMEO AND JULIET, deftly adapted by Nicholas Emmanuele, at McDowell Little Theatre. Reflecting on the two experiences, the theme and treatment of "death" had some surprising similarities. Ludwig's approach to the Christie mystery is more light-hearted and comic than Christie's own stage version, with more cuts and jabs from character to character than I remember from previous iterations. The fellow travelers on the train from Istanbul to Calais at first seem distanced from one another. However, we realize that they may not actually be isolated - in fact, they not o...