Detective fiction is thriving, so why does theatre make do with workmanlike adaptations in place of real stage whodunnits?
When I was very young, I used to think that a mystery play must be a tremendously exciting thing, full of murder and enigma and terror. So imagine my disappointment when I learned they each was merely a series of medieval shorts about Jesus. The same goes for passion plays; not a single bodice ripper among them. (I suppose flagellation and crowns of thorns might be some people's turn-on, though I don't especially like to think of it.)
But why are there so few actual stage mysteries? I can't be alone in wanting to see them though I will readily admit to an obsession with detective fiction. I find the formula of such novels supremely comforting. A murderer invites chaos; a detective restores order. It isn't exactly catharsis, but it's awfully close. Indeed, WH Auden, another addict, draws several parallels between the Greek tragedy and the detective story. He even recommends that whodunnits adhere to the three unities. Me, I don't mind a few extra revolutions of the sun and a subplot or two.
As any trip to your local bookstore will tell you, mystery remains a thriving genre. So why does the theatre all but ignore it, especially when two examples of the genre have been so successful? The Mousetrap has sprung in London since 1952 and The Perfect Crime has bludgeoned New Yorkers since 1987. I've never been entirely sure how to explain this paucity. Perhaps it's because any play is a series of assumed names and identities, and to inquire too deeply into questions of whodunnit is to risk upending the theatrical illusion itself, dissolving the play rather than solving the problem. But I don't really believe that.
Of the mystery plays that crowd anthologies, many ? like The Spanish Tragedy, Macbeth, The Adding Machine, Desire Under the Elms, or Rope ? aren't mysteries at all. The audience watches the crimes even as they are committed and doesn't suffer a lick of doubt as to the identity of the perpetrators. As to the rest, most are workmanlike adaptations of novels (various Sherlock Holmes plays, Ten Little Indians) and too many of the ones that are original and are mysterious (An Inspector Calls, The Last of Mrs Cheyney) don't include a murder.
So, if my counting is right, we're left with Night Must Fall, Hostile Witness, Deathtrap ? recently seen in London's West End with Simon Russell Beale ? and a handful of others. My favourite, unsurprisingly, is Tom Stoppard's gloriously funny parody of the genre, The Real Inspector Hound, a play that reveals the murderous heart beating in the breast of every theatre critic. I'm also fond of Neal Bell's more recent Spatter Pattern, which tells the story of troubled screenwriter and his relationship with a murder suspect, though I suspect it functions more as a thriller than as a proper mystery.
If first-class writers such as Julian Barnes, GK Chesterton, Jonathan Lethem, Benjamin Black and Thomas Pynchon can bear to turn their pens to formula fiction, why have so few excellent playwrights dared to do the same? Come on, gentlemen and ladies ? it's about time we were provided with some new uses for stage blood.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2011/jul/28/detective-plays-mystery-theatre
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