All aboard 'Orient Express' at Theatre Charlotte

This review by longtime Charlotte arts critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on October 27, 2025. You can find out more about The Charlotte Ledger’s commitment to smart local news and information and sign up for our newsletter for free here. Ledger subscribers can add the Toppman on the Arts newsletter on their “My Account” page.

by Lawrence Toppman

Agatha Christie adapted more than a dozen of her novels and stories into plays, including “And Then There Were None,” “Witness for the Prosecution” and “Death on the Nile.” Yet she never tried to adapt “Murder on the Orient Express.” Perhaps she found the large cast of characters unwieldy or the complex conclusion too difficult to unravel convincingly onstage.

Ken Ludwig tackled the task in 2015 for Agatha Christie Limited, which has managed her literary rights for 70 years. Like the authors of the theatrical version of “The 39 Steps” in the ’90s, Ludwig decided straight suspense wouldn’t work and tossed in broad humor that might’ve puzzled Christie. (I’ve read 60 or so books of hers and can’t remember two dozen big laughs.)

Yet he remained faithful to her conception and intricate narrative, stripping the number of suspects down from 12 to eight for practical reasons. So mystery fans who make their way to Theatre Charlotte can appreciate the play in two ways: As a true old-fashioned whodunit, if they have not read the novel or seen the films with Albert Finney and Kenneth Branagh, or as a cleverly staged entertainment with a familiar outcome.

Besides the humor, Ludwig has made two changes that will strike Poirot purists — myself first among them — as bizarre. First, the Belgian detective (played with no-nonsense keenness by a younger-than-usual Brandon Samples) has been given a faint romantic inclination toward one of the suspects, a Hungarian countess who briefly becomes his investigative sidekick.

Second, he displays a fanatic attitude toward crime that makes him first cousin to Inspector Javert in “Les Miserables,” although Christie’s Poirot showed no such tendencies. His final monologues about conscience and the letter of the law make the ending of the play, so deftly handled by Christie in her novel, seem overlong and odd.

Despite those speeches, the play comes in at a trim two hours that supply all the essential material and play fair with the viewer. We really have the sense we’re moving forward, both on the rushing train and inside the coach itself when snow halts the journey.

Director Jill Bloede keeps this cast in motion literally, abetted by Chris Timmons’ set pieces, which shift on and off without delay. The production looks especially sumptuous, from the rear projections of the train (abetted by blasts of steam and offstage sounds) to the interior compartments of the sleeping and dining cars.

In case you need a recap, I’ll be brief. Samuel Ratchett, an abrasive American who has received threatening notes, gets stabbed aboard a coach full of passengers: the countess, a Scottish colonel, an English governess, a Russian princess in exile, a Swedish missionary in floods of tears, Ratchett’s secretary and a much-married American woman. Poirot, a train conductor and the hand-wringing representative of the Express’ owners complete the list of travelers.

Poirot quickly realizes Ratchett is a kidnapper and murderer on the run, fleeing someone who knows he murdered a little girl in America. He then assembles clues that lead to a startling solution or, to be accurate, two possible solutions he presents near the end of the journey.

Christie dealt mostly in stereotypes — the barking Scotsman, the haughty Russian, the brassy American divorcee — and Ludwig reinforces them, frequently to raise smiles. The actors relish their simple characters; I especially enjoyed Kathryn Stamas’ rip-roaring take on Helen Hubbard, the motor-mouthed and matrimony-minded Minnesotan.

But we don’t read Christie for subtlety of characterization or depth of psychological insight; we read her to assemble mental puzzles alongside Poirot. This play and production serve that end well, baffling us while providing some boffo chuckles during the journey.

“Murder on the Orient Express” runs at Theatre Charlotte, 501 Queens Road, through Nov. 9 at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday. (There’s also a 7:30 p.m. show on Wednesday, Nov. 5.) All Sunday shows have sold out, as has the Saturday show on Nov. 1.

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Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020. Now, he’s back in the critic’s chair for the Charlotte Ledger — look for his reviews several times each month in the Charlotte Ledger.

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