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While following up on a movie about the Mercury Theatre’s “voodoo Macbeth” production, found this fantastic Wikipedia page with tons of pictures and even a film clip from the original production.

Poirot 2

Follow-up to my 2023-01-29 diary post on Hercule Poirot.

From reading Poirot’s Wikipedia page, I discovered that the stories do document that he is Catholic, and a few nods are made to it in a few of the episodes in the early years.

I was also pleased, on watching David Suchet’s “Being Poirot” that he also highlighted the end of the Murder on the Orient Express, which I found so moving.

I’ve been icing my ankle in the evenings after Liz goes to bed, so I’ve taken the opportunity to catch up on the Poirot episodes via Britbox. I’m not watching them all, but there are a few – “Chocolate Box” is one – that are nicely done, even if they destroy certain elements of the original story. I’m surprised at how many of these old episodes I remember from their first runs.

Seeing them in a batch like this, Christie’s devices become noticeable: an older character is revealed to be the unknown parent of a younger character, the murder always happens earlier than the timeline suggests.

It is fun to see the bits of business inserted for the actors to do to flesh out their characters. My favorite bit: Hastings is washing dishes, Poirot is drying them. As they speculate about the case, Hastings absent-mindedly hands over a washed saucer to Poirot, who examines it, and passes it back to Hastings for further cleaning. The same saucer is washed and passed back through the entire scene and this absolutely delighted me.

It’s also fun to see young actors like Christopher Eccleston and Damien Lewis in their very young and slim incarnations.

I’m working my way through the seasons, watching the few stories that really interest me, and then finishing with Curtain, which I’ve never read nor seen.

Diary

  • Inbox: 19. I have hopes to dispose of them today
  • Resting and icing the ankle, giving it all the care I should have been giving it the last 2 weeks
  • TV: I’ve been reading some Hercule Poirot short stories, and rediscovered the David Suchet Poirot series on BritBox. I watched the very first story, and then skipped to a much later story from almost 12 years later, Murder on the Orient Express. 📺 Too rushed in places (they simply wait for Poirot to go back to sleep?), but the textures are darker and involve more moral questioning from the Poirot character himself. It’s a movie about choices, and where one draws the line of right and wrong, justice and injustice. The confident certainty from the early season cozy mysteries is there but cracks are showing in the foundation. Suchet’s detective is more exhausted, depressed, and lonely; the world gets more evil and no better, despite his efforts to set things right. I was astonished at Poirot holding his rosary beads and praying before bed; but it makes perfect sense for him to be a Catholic, and for his core beliefs–in God and justice (and also Poirot)–to be challenged by this case. The final scene of Poirot walking away from the police, having made a choice that has clearly broken him, was heartbreaking and a moment that Christie could never have imagined. Suchet’s performance creates a new Poirot, and it makes me want to see all the later, darker stories before going back to the cozies.

Now reading Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie 📚 I felt the need for some light and easy short stories, and these scratch that itch.

via Serial Reader

Stopped reading The Gigging Life: Lessons Learned on the Literary Road by Matt Love 📚 Some interesting stories, but the pamphlet as a whole did not grab me. While his gigging never made him rich, the experiences did enrich his life and he got a book out of it. Nothing is wasted!

The only commitment today is a Chili Cook-off in the Common Dining Room. We just put the white chicken chili on to simmer. Time spent not eating or cleaning up is devoted to catching up on emails, and then attacking a growing list of postponed tasks in Remember the Milk and a spreading pile of papers on my desk. I’ve been reading productivity pr0n for 40 years and I still haven’t cracked the code of Just Do It.